Hello All,
Some of you may be aware that the power situation in
southern California is tight this summer. So tight that the ISO (aka CalSO) is letting
customers know that rolling blackouts are a possibility. The ISO says that it’s
unlikely that it will come to rolling blackouts, but we maintain that most people can’t bet
their business on it. Rolling blackouts and hard power cycles are potentially
damaging to networking equipment and servers. The issue with rolling blackouts
is that when the power is restored to a particular area, everything in that
area begins catching up immediately. For example, when all the A/C units have been off in an
area for a rolling blackout, it’s likely that they will all kick
on almost immediately when they get power again, trying to catch up for the
temperature increase during the blackout. The same applies for many servers, switches,
UPS, routers, and user’s desktop machines. This sudden increased demand for
power can cause power surges. BIG ones. Power surges can toast routers and
switches and damage components in servers.
TH2 would like to help. One quick and cheap way of
protecting yourself is to buy decent surge protectors for networking equipment
in your office. Trip-Light has a great site to help you select appropriate devices, and they are a trusted manufacturer of network protection equipment. The switches, routers, modem, and servers you have should all be protected. Look for surge protectors with a high joule rating.
This denotes how much power a surge protector can absorb without failing.
Obviously, the higher the better!
All UPS have built in surge protectors and also provide
battery power to devices for a short time in the event of a power outage. This
can help protect networking equipment and also get your business back up and
running in the event of a rolling blackout. The only issue with an UPS is
getting the right size and making sure to balance loads across different
devices. TH2 can help pick and install the proper UPS for your business.
Finally, sign up for Flex Alerts. Flex Alerts will send out
messages when the grid is approaching capacity, allowing the users of that grid
to take action before power companies are forced into rolling blackouts. The
more people who are signed up for Flex Alerts the better! Get your friends and
associates signed up too. When you receive a flex alert, the idea is for people
to try hard to cut excess power usage by turning off lights and not running
appliances for a while. Here is the Flex Alerts site: http://www.flexalert.org/
Naturally, we are more than willing to come in and do a
power audit on your site for you. Ideally, we can replace old power hungry equipment
with newer, more efficient hardware. Eventually power savings (along with long
term cooling savings, maintenance, up-time, and the higher productivity afforded
by newer hardware) can often times make up a portion or all of the upfront
costs of new hardware and installation.
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Should you have any questions regarding the services offered by TH2 Technologies please be sure to contact them for further information.
TH2 specializes in Orange County IT Support, Orange County IT Services and Orange County Computer Support.
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