Those great big batteries (UPS) at the side of the server are designed to prevent disaster
striking should your site suffer a
power failure.
I once stopped by at the UPS stand in a trade fair - they had great coffee
and I needed a rest. Now I thought I knew about UPS devices, but the
salesmen showed me some extra capabilities for disaster protection.
The most important job of the UPS is to cut-in when the power fails
UPS also protects against 'brown outs' when the light dims but the power
stays on.
UPS will also smooth voltage preventing power surges during electric storms.
Additional UPS Features
The system I saw at the trade fair had 'bells and whistles' like short term capacitors and diesel
engines that would deliver conventional AC power. It also had
microprocessor sensors and switch over.
A Cautionary Tale of an UPS disaster
I sometimes take on work on the basis of 'no fix - no fee'. So I went to
company advertising for a consultant to find the bottleneck on their network. To
my delight got a contract. However, when I turned up, there were long
faces all round, the server room had been burnt down.
Before I abandoned the job, I thought at least they could tell me what had
happened. After a long pause, the junior techie blurted out that the UPS
spilt neat acid onto a pile paper, the acid burnt the paper starting a fire.
Cardboard boxes in the room also caught fire and that
in turn burnt down the server. Well no work for me, but a moral to one
and all, add: ' I must service the UPS' to your disaster recovery plan.
Guy
Recommends You Try SolarWinds Patch Manager (SPM)
With SPM you can push out patches,
which companies such as Mozilla Firefox or Adobe Acrobat provide. The point
is that because WSUS does not do this for non-Microsoft software
updates, you need a good add-on to take care of this task. With
the Patch Manager you can even create your own packages to apply to your
servers or clients.
Guy Recommends:
SolarWinds' NPM - Network Performance Monitor
SolarWinds' performance monitor is designed for detecting network outages,
making it easy to see what's working, and what needs your attention.
This utility guides you through creating network maps; it also helps
identifying whether the
root cause is faulty equipment, or resource overload. Give NPM a try.
