I woke up to a screaming CPU fan. I thought “There goes the morning”. But of course, no, the morning just kept trucking on. So did I, once my hardware failure plan kicked in. The plan, in a nutshell, is this:
- Turn off desktop computer.
- Unplug external hard drives, monitors, keyboard, mouse etc.
- Turn on laptop.
- Add external monitor, keyboard & mouse, and external hard drives.
- Call tech guy to sort out desktop computer.
- Continue work as usual.
Total downtime: around 10 minutes. The longest part of that was trying to figure out how to fish my keyboard’s cable up behind my desk to reach the new USB port.
Website development is largely online, so I can still access all my customer websites. I have almost all my office software except for my email, so I’m using webmail instead. Life, in short, goes on.
What would be the situation for you if your main computer were to be out of commission? Would it be a 10 minute downtime situation? Would you be pulling your hair out in a panic? Hopefully the former is true.
Not having my main computer isn’t so bad, except for the loss of the second large monitor. I could use the laptop screen but I like the bigger view on my big monitors. Yeah, I know. First world problem.
I thought I’d post this just as a prompt for you to think about your own business’ data backup and disaster recovery situation. Is mine good? It’s better than nothing but honestly, it could be better. If my office burned down I’d be in a bit of a pickle until I got a new laptop. Most but not all of my files are stored in the cloud so I’d probably be alright.
I’m getting there, but it’s not perfect. Incidents like today are a reminder that there’s still work to be done to make sure I have created a system that can deal with more serious emergencies. I hope you’ll consider doing the same for your business IT systems.
Happy Monday!
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