With Mayor Bloomberg certain that climate change has made plenty more hurricanes in store for New York, it’s probably wise to have a backup plan for your business’s data.
Hundreds of New York companies were anxiously waiting to see when they’d have power and be able to figure out how to get their computers and servers humming again. Even Google’s Chelsea digs remain lightless as of Friday morning, before Con Ed got the juices flowing downtown.
“Most importantly, practice disaster recovery,” said Tom Wilson, a systems administrator working to get companies up and running. “Lots of people think they are safe because they’ve never actually tried a dry run of what they would need to do in a disaster.”
Wilson advises keeping backup servers off-site, and to drill for recovering data just from these backups, and to make multiple copies.
“Data you don’t have three copies of is data you don’t care about,” he added.
But there are a few success stories.
Livestream, a service that lets people broadcast video over the Internet, lost main power at its offices on the 15th floor of Google’s building on Monday, but has been able to keep its servers up and running with a diesel generator, according to Max Haot, Livestream’s CEO.
Until power was restored at its main office, Livestream was working out of a temporary space in Brooklyn.
“We always wanted to be in Williamsburg!” Haot quipped.
In the meantime, New York Tech Meetup, a Silicon Alley business association, is recruiting volunteers to help get systems back online or find space for companies in need.