Disaster Prepardness | FIBERTOWN BLOG

5 Top Reasons to Use On-Site Service from Data Centers

At FIBERTOWN, we offer our colocation clients an on-site service we call our “hands and eyes” support.

Clients often utilize this service during natural disasters, like Hurricane Harvey and Winter Storm Uri, but we also offered significant support during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Here are the top 5 reasons our customers continue to ask for on-site service from our 24/7 tech staff.

Reason #1: Better use of time and budgeting

If your business is located in Texas, you may have come on-site to one of our data centers to set up your IT equipment or move it from your previous environment.

But when you have something like a hardware reboot — the simple turning off and on of hardware to reset the equipment and get it back online — is it really your best use of time to drive or fly to our data center to do it yourself?

The best business acumen will say budgeting for that short trip doesn’t make fiscal sense. It’s better to utilize the expert on-site FIBERTOWN staff to handle the in-person fixes.

You can also ship your hard drives or devices to FIBERTOWN data centers, and we can install them for you. Save your tech the trip.

Reason #2: We take care of the repetitive tasks

In an IT environment, small changes that need to happen for hardware aren’t always difficult — but they are necessary.

For example, tasks like labeling or racking devices — placing devices into cabinets, plugging in power and connective cords are important. They must be done correctly and accurately, but not necessarily by your own personal techs.

These are great tasks to hand off to our hands and eyes team.

Reason #3: Cheaper than sending IT staff to fix

Troubleshooting is always going to be part of the IT daily tasks.

Whether it’s a new configuration or devices, testing and fixing are just part of the business process.

If you need someone to console or plug into devices, discover what errors the device is showing, and work with your team on fixes — we have the skilled staff to handle it.

Instead of sending your own team, or hiring a third party, you can rely on the 24/7/365 staff that knows the ins and outs of our data center environment and can get you back on track quickly.

It’s a simple way to save money on your bottom line.

Reason #4: Convenience

When you’re in the middle of the workday, canceling meetings and interrupting the flow of your day to make your way to your data center is a hassle.

Convenience is key.

You can rely on the FIBERTOWN staff to help you with those on-site swaps that need to happen for your IT department.

We can help swap bad memory or hard drives to avoid excessive downtime.

Or, we’re able to reterminate or relocate cabling. Direct our staff to swap out bad cables or move cables to different ports or different devices, and we’ll get it done for you quickly.

Reason #5: Gives your staff time to focus on higher-level tasks

Being able to see the long-term vision for your IT staff is vitally important.

Every team has concurrent projects that have solid deadlines.

Giving your staff the time they need to focus on those higher-level tasks keeps projects on time and staff on point.

For customers who have a lot of data storage needs, we can handle tape rotations, store tapes on-site, or pack up tapes to ship to off-site storage.

Prepared for the upcoming hurricane season

At FIBERTOWN, we help companies address two key factors: maintaining the availability of your critical technical systems and work area recovery space.

Customers look to FIBERTOWN and our team of disaster recovery experts to maintain 100% up-time.

Our hands and eyes service is just one way we continue to help our clients when they need it most.

Call us today, and gain peace of mind knowing you can handle any disaster that comes your way.

Is Your Generator Reliable? Do You Have Backup Power?

On Sunday night, November 27th, Houston residents received a boil water notice. A water purification plant in the city had experienced a brief power disruption, causing water pressure to drop below the minimum requirement of 20 PSI. This drop in pressure is what caused officials to give the boil water notice as a precaution for residents.

State and local entities worked with guidance from the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality to lift the boil water notice about 40 hours later. And for that we’re grateful.

A Cautionary Tale…

This article is not intended to put down an organization. (In fact, we commend the quick, safe approach by the Houston authorities and greatly appreciate their efforts.) Instead, this article is a cautionary tale about backup power for all businesses.

We ask these serious questions.

Are the generators at your on-premise data center and/or office building reliable?
Do you have redundant power?
Are there plans in place if you lose power?
What service outages would your customers experience if you lost power completely for 2 minutes? 15 minutes? For an hour?
How much revenue would you lose? Are lives at stake if you lose power?
What damages would your hardware experience with a power loss?

You Don’t Have to Have All of the Answers

Truthfully, just typing the questions above makes our hearts beat rapidly. The ramifications of an outage for a company without backup power are expensive, time-consuming, and can cost human lives.

Power redundancy (i.e., having multiple sources of power) is a serious consideration for companies. Redundancy means reliability and peace of mind. And it’s for these reasons that clients choose a data center like FIBERTOWN.

It’s our job to have and maintain utility and generator power for your hardware. (We go into more detail about the traits of a top-rated data center in this article).

FIBERTOWN Can Keep You Up and Running

We have two data centers – one in Houston and one in Bryan-College Station. These data centers are fitted with redundant power and cooling systems. Backup generators are on site, and they are manned by IT professionals 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

We’ll keep your company’s hardware up and running, even if the world outside is without power.

Ask us how we do this! We’d love to tell you more.

Complete the contact form to begin a conversation.

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3 Ways FIBERTOWN Prepares Customers for Possible Blackouts

Due to the scorcher in Texas this summer, people and businesses have faced water and energy restrictions.

Hot temperatures place a strain on the electric grid, and electricity issues, in turn, affect your computer hardware. And when servers are interrupted, business comes to a halt.

In this article, we outline three ways FIBERTOWN helps businesses stay running, even when facing hot temperatures and rolling blackouts.

FIBERTOWN Offers Redundant Power and Cooling

FIBERTOWN is a one-stop shop, a single-source solution. We’re a data center with two locations – Houston and Bryan, Texas. And as a data center, we provide redundant power, cooling, and connectivity. With redundancy, you have a backup plan. And that means your business is not vulnerable when rolling (or unexpected!) blackouts occur.

In July 2022, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (or ERCOT) issued warnings of rolling blackouts expected for many Texans. The power grid was under strain. To prevent rolling blackouts from being necessary, though, the Council first asked citizens to not use large appliances between 2:00 and 9:00 pm and to adjust thermostats to 78 degrees on specified days.

Fortunately, these preventive measures conserved enough energy to make the rolling blackouts unnecessary (for now). But an important question remains – How would a rolling or unexpected blackout affect your business?

At FIBERTOWN, both data centers are equipped with a concurrently maintainable cooling configuration so the cooling system is always available. As for power, we have concurrently maintainable, redundant power as well, plus generators onsite.

While others are stressed about possible power outages, our customers are not.

Disaster Recovery Means Preparedness for You

We’re not just a data center. We’re a “disaster recovery and business continuity office space.”

At FIBERTOWN, we provide 100% uptime for business-critical systems, and that means fewer effects on your business in case of a disaster. And whether power outages are planned or are a result of disasters, our disaster recovery (DR) clients have access to a range of options. We can be your primary and secondary site, only secondary site, hot or tape backup and highly available (HA) failover. Plus, we have office space ready for your team to work if your location is without electricity.

Staying Connected

Another major concern with blackouts is network connectivity. Relying on only one provider to keep you connected may result in you being down during maintenance or an outage. FIBERTOWN offers our blended bandwidth.

This way, no matter what’s occurring with one or two carriers, you’re still connected. Furthermore, our multiple carriers enter our building via numerous points of entry. It’s redundancy on top of redundancy. And that’s the FIBERTOWN way.

FIBERTOWN Can Help

We want you cool-headed during blackouts and/or disasters. With our redundant systems, we ensure power, cooling, and connectivity for our clients. And this means business as usual for you…no matter the temperatures outside.

Tag: Disaster Prepardness