It Doesn’t Take a Hurricane: Avoiding Network Disasters

It’s been hard to process some of the news coming out of Texas in these last few weeks. Fifty inches of rain in two days. Thirty thousand people displaced and hundreds of thousands of homes under water. Exploding chemical plants. Perhaps up to $200 billion in damages.

Major natural disasters—hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, earthquakes, blizzards, etc.—will of course always be with us. But it doesn’t take a major “act of God” to create a disaster for your business. If you haven’t prepared properly, a simple power outage, human error, hardware failure—or even a leaky pipe in the server room—could be enough to knock out your access to critical business functions for hours or days. For most businesses, even a few hours of downtime could mean major revenue losses or other adverse impacts. A week of downtime? That’s enough to put 9 out of 10 companies out of business within a year.

The flipside is that if you do have a good disaster recovery in place, even major natural catastrophes like hurricanes can be weathered with few problems and limited downtime.

For example, consider a scenario where all of your critical files, data, and software live only in your on-site server. If that server shuts down, fails, or suffers a security breach, you’re up a creek (you know what kind) without a paddle. Something as simple as a burst pipe or wind damage from a thunderstorm could cripple you.

Now, let’s say you have everything not only at your on-site server, but backed up at another data center down the road or across town. That’s better, but you’re still vulnerable to city, county, or region-wide disasters. A major storm, flood, power outage, or earthquake could knock you out in both places.

The safest option is to have at least one backup and recovery option located further afield, so that even a hurricane isn’t enough to knock you out everywhere.

Preparing for the worst and then avoiding it (or at least recovering as quickly as possible) isn’t just about where your backups live, however. You’re also going to want to make sure any company or equipment provider you work with has a strong reputation, is compatible with your business’ hardware, can provide you with 24-hour support, etc.

TelDesigns can make that happen for you. Just like a broker can shop the competition for the best deal, or a realtor can help you evaluate housing needs and find you the perfect home in your price range, we help companies of all sizes protect their IT infrastructure against all kinds of disasters by helping you identify your needs, then build and implement an effective and affordable solution. You benefit from our connections and years of industry knowledge, getting the guidance you need to put together the right disaster recovery plan for your business needs at the right price. Saving you money AND protecting your business from disaster is what we do, and we do it well.

To learn more, give us a call at (616) 965-2030, check us out online at teldesigns.com, or connect on social media.