Power outage? What about your servers

Checklist: is your company ready for power outages?

1. Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS)
Maybe your servers are equipped with a UPS system? To be completely sure, regular testing of a UPS is recommended. Please note this:

How long can the UPS handle a power outage?
Is the configuration OK so that all servers can be shut down on time?

2. Back up your files
Due to a power outage, files can be damaged or disappear. Play safe and back up your precious data.

Microsoft offers you with Azure Backup a safe, reliable and fast online and off-site backup. Whatever happens in your organization – e.g. corrupted files after a power outage – you can immediately restore your data on the servers yourself, without any technical knowledge.

3. Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP)
Does your organization have a ‘Disaster Recovery Plan’? A‘roadmap’ which describes the steps to be taken in critical situations. Some examples:

How long can your UPS system handle a power outage? What about longer outages? Who does what?
What if the power outage occurs just before your daily backup? What impact does this have on your organization? If this has disastrous consequences, you will need to adjust the backup frequency (RTO = Recovery Time Objective).
What response speeds (SLA) do your suppliers offer?
...and so on.

And last but not least: testing! Few organizations test their Disaster Recovery Plan (if they already have one), which is quite tricky, of course. You don't have to worry about simulating a power failure during office hours, thanks to Azure Site Recovery you have a test environment in which you can test as much as you want, and this without affecting the production environment.

4. Emergency power generator
It is useful to investigate whether an emergency power generator can help you to set up a minimum service to your employees and/or your customers. Of course, a generator does not replace the above measures that you have to take in any case.