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> They had battery backup for an hour and then generators that could be fired up in twenty minutes with 3 days worth of diesel. How often did you test that? >
by mseebach 10y ago
> They had battery backup for an hour and then generators that could be fired up in twenty minutes with 3 days worth of diesel.
How often did you test that?
> has less than 8 hours of backup power for their mission critical computers?
It's plausible that they thought they had that, but some part of it failed.
- bradleyjg 10y agoI don't remember, but when we were taking the tour the guide did mention that the tested the batteries and generators on some schedule. I bet there's some industry standard that has a minimum testing frequency.
- dbcurtis 10y agoIn my experience (radio repeater and cell sites on mountain tops) an auto-start timer runs the generator once per week for 30 minutes or so. Diesels dont like to sit too long without being run. And these are 30-50 Kw generators, relatively small in comparison to a data center. I expect a weekly schedule is common practice.
- usea 10y ago> How often did you test that? Not parent, but here is a single data point. When I was a student, I worked for some sysadmins who managed a small, internal data center. ~200 IBM servers, a SAN, an old VAX, etc. It had a backup gas generator that was tested loudly, every single week. It was also tested whenever the power went out for too long. Obviously lots can go wrong, even with the best plans, but at least at the tiny little place I worked, the generator was tested every week.
- dpcx 10y agoThe data center where my employer used to house stuff tested their generators for short bursts weekly, and would run them for 8 hours every quarter.
- stygiansonic 10y agoVery good points. Backups or backup systems should not be considered as true "backups" unless you've successfully failed over to them.