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ISP Recovers in 72 Hours After Leveling by Tornado

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the now-that-is-what-i-call-disaster-recovery dept.

aldheorte writes "Amazing story of how an ISP in Jackson, TN, whose main facility was completely leveled by a tornado, recovered in 72 hours. The story is a great recounting of how they executed their disaster recovery plan, what they found they had left out of that plan, data recovery from destroyed hard drives, and perhaps the best argument ever for offsite backups. (Not affiliated with the ISP in question)"

8 of 258 comments (clear)

  1. That's fricking awesome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "So, ah, your ISP here.. what's your uptime for the last year?"

    "99.18% for our service, and 96.2% for our building."

  2. Poor tech support by dswensen · · Score: 5, Funny

    And I'm sure every minute of those 72 hours was characterized by irate phone calls to tech support.

    "Are you guys down again? You're down more than you're up! I'm going to find another service... etc..."

    "Ma'am our facilities have been entirely leveled by a tornado, we'll be back up in 72 hours."

    "72 HOURS?! I have photos of my grandchildren I have to mail! Worst ISP ever! Let me speak to your supervisor!"

    "Ma'am our supervisor was also leveled by the tornado."

    *click*

    Not that I work tech support for an ISP and am bitter...

  3. Elephant Insurance by Bob+Vila's+Hammer · · Score: 5, Funny

    When your business gets pelted with the equivalent force of 100,000 elephants, you better have a friggin contingency plan.

    --


    --"The perfect example of the man of action is the suicide." - William Carlos Williams
  4. Before someone else says it... by wo1verin3 · · Score: 5, Funny

    No, in Russia Tornado does not own you. Neither does ISP. It is not, step 1) tornado step 2) ??? step 3) ISP recovers. There is not a beowulf cluster of these, and the tornado doesn't run Linux.

    1. Re:Before someone else says it... by Trigun · · Score: 5, Funny

      the tornado doesn't run Linux.

      No, it runs .NET. There's a lot of huffing and puffing, nobody knows too much about it, and in the end your business is in shambles and half your IT staff is no longer.

      -3 Stupid.

  5. Re:Amazing is an innapropriate adjective by HardCase · · Score: 5, Funny
    I realize that slashdot is mostly populated by high-school educated "IT people", who give a shit about logs and backups and think plugging a PC and monitor into a powerbar is "computer science". To these people, the prospect of plugging in a bunch of computers and restoring backup tapes is exhillirating and exciting. The highlight of their lives.

    But, as a programmer, I just dont care.



    When I was a sophomore, working on my electrical engineering degree, I worked for a small, network-centric company that employed what seemed to be an abnormal number of snooty programmers and technical writers. Maybe it wasn't so abnormal.



    Me: "Hi, IT support."
    Stratjakt: "Hey, I know you're just a high-school educated 'IT person', but you need to get one of your cable monkeys up here and find out why I can't see the network!"
    Me:: "OK, but let's check a couple of things quickly before I dispatch a technician. It may save some time."
    Stratjakt: "Hey, I'm a programmer! I just don't care!"
    Me: "I understand...I realize that my mundane existance doesn't have the exhilaration and exitedness of the thrilling, edge-of-your-seat world of a computer programmer, but there are just a few simple things that we could do to resolve this problem that will be faster than you waiting for a technician."
    Stratjakt: "I just don't care."
    Me: "No problem, I'll dispatch a technican."


    An hour later...


    Technician: "Stratjakt is all fixed up. I plugged his network cable back into the jack."

  6. Re:However... by MachineShedFred · · Score: 5, Funny

    I, for one, welcome our new Tornado-beating ISP overlords.

    --
    Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
  7. But... by macshune · · Score: 5, Funny

    Can they recover from the slashdot effect???

    The slashdot effect differs from a tornado in a few subtle ways:

    1) You can't see it coming (unless you pay money to be a subscriber)

    2) It doesn't hurt anything, except for webservers, the occasional OC line lit up like New Year's Eve, spammers, and the odd *IAA executive.

    3) A tornado doesn't typically smell like armpits, cheetos, empty 64oz soda cups, burning plastic, your parent's basement and/or too much cologne for that first date.

    4) It travels at the speed of light, a lot quicker than a tornado.

    5) Does not require specific atmospheric conditions to be present...just a link on the front page.

    Anything else?