We'd recently taken over the IT support for a small 10 user network in the Aldgate area and just completed our network healthcheck report. Amongst the recommendations was to review the UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) setup. Of course, in line with somebody's law, they had a major power outage before all our recommendations were implemented....

 

Apparently a transformer at the local electricity substation blew in a spectacular way, causing a major power surge before the protective circuit breakers cut the power. This resulted in damage to many electronic devices in the local area, from fridge thermostats to even a one building's lift control unit.

 Fortunately our client did have a UPS for their server, which did its job well in protecting the server from the surge and then keeping it online for another twenty minutes or so after the power went. Unfortunately the UPS Management software wasnt installed so when the battery ran out the server was not shutdown properly, the power just cut. As the server had many open sessions due to all the network PCs going offline unexpectedly when the power went it did not respond well, and serious corruption of the Active Directory occurred. As a result we had to send a technician onsite the next morning to restore the AD from a backup and get them back online, following which he had to replace the router as that also appeared to have suffered from the power surge. All in all the incident ended up costing them significantly more than a properly installed UPS and surge protected plug sockets would have done in the first place.

At help4IT we recommend APC UPS devices, they aren't the cheapest option but they offer the best combination of features and management software. It is also worth purchasing "surge protected" power strips for all your IT equipment, i.e. desktops, printers etc. With an APC UPS the management software can show graphs of the quality of your building power supply and you would be surprised how poor it can be!