I had an opportunity to test my home IT business continuity plan last night. It failed.
We had an electrical transformer in my neighborhood blow at about 3 this morning. I think the "boom" was what woke me up rather than the lights going off, then on, then off. What kept me up was the alarm on my fairly new UPS. I went to where I leave the flashlights so I can find them, and that worked. Two of the three flashlights were working (as they say, "Two out of three ain't bad."). The new UPS performed very well. I've made two oversights in my plan:
- I don't know how to silence the alarm in the dark.
- I had the monitor plugged into a surge protected slot rather than a UPS slot (so the computers were working, but not the monitors).
Fortunately, it was only about a two hour outage, but that did mean I had to shutdown the computers. In terms of outcomes, things went well once I plugged the monitor into a UPS slot and then shutdown ("Are you sure you want to shutdown?").
It looks like I have to revise my plan and practice some more. I might also go to ready.gov and check for other things I should pay attention to.
It makes one think... How good are our work plans? Are they written down? How often do we practice?
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