Restarting the free accounting search

Posted Jul 31, 2017 17:55 UTC (Mon) by pizza (subscriber, #46)
In reply to: Restarting the free accounting search by tialaramex
Parent article: Restarting the free accounting search

> You've done continuity "planning" but have you actually had to cope ?

We came close -- Last summer, a hurricane turned a few degrees to the north at the last moment and missed us entirely. Since then, the worst has been a power outage and an internet service outage, each completely shutting us down for about half a day. (Ironically, the same things that make us more resilient to major disasters makes us more vulnerable to the more run-of-the-mill stuff..)

But your point about being multi-site is well taken; our "continuity" plans only really work because we're so geographically dispersed. Fortunately, this particular site has never had to go into full disaster _recovery_ mode.

(BTW, I am familiar with how bad Legionniare's can get, having had a rather close encounter with it in my youth)

Restarting the free accounting search

Posted Jul 31, 2017 19:56 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

(BTW, I am familiar with how bad Legionniare's can get, having had a rather close encounter with it in my youth)

When I was a student at Edinburgh University in the late 1980s, Legionella bacteria were found in a water tank of the air-conditioning system that served the university's computing centre. This was during an early summer that by Scottish standards was quite warm, and running the computers without air conditioning was not an option. Hence the computing centre was duly shut down for at least a week – I don't quite remember the specifics – so the A/C units (all of them) could be thoroughly sanitised. While the operations staff tried to keep a rudimentary service running, this was a huge hassle as lots of people had exams and deadlines for papers or projects coming up and couldn't do the requisite work. For a company, it would probably have been even more of a problem.

So, Legionnaires' disease is not to be trifled with. I don't think anybody actually contracted it at the time, which was just as well.