In our own continued effort to maintain a business continuity plan at Homeland Secure IT, LLC, we are now looking into a generator system. Currently, in the event of a power outage, we have uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) from APC that will keep our main servers and desktops online, however, we will be in the dark.
These UPS (UPSes? UPSii?) devices will keep us going anywhere from 60 minutes to as little as 15 minutes, depending upon the load on the machines they are powering. In most cases, you need only a few minutes to save your work when you are working with a desktop computer, but what about our mail server, our VoIP phone system? If those are offline, we may miss out on the opportunity to assist our customers.
Power outages generally are resolved quickly, but what if one were not? That is where a stand-by generator system would come in. In the event of a power outage, our UPS would take over and after a minute or two, a stand-by generator would engage and power the entire facility, including recharging the UPS until the power was restored. In our case, the generator will be powered by clean burning natural gas and can run continuously for days at a time. While expensive, these generators are a worth-while investment.
If you would like information about how a stand-by generator can help with your own business continuity plan, please contact us.