Technology Will Break and Humans Will Fail, But…

One of our founders is fond of a saying. It goes like so:

Technology will break and humans will fail.

I know, I know. It sounds awfully pessimistic. But we don’t take it that way. Instead, it keeps us grounded, focused and ready to respond to disasters, whether they’re DDOS attacks, power outages or customer emergencies.

Technology is complex. Different operating systems, hardware functions and software integrations don’t always play nice together. And let’s face it; users sometimes break things without even knowing how. If there’s one thing IT professionals know, it’s this mantra. Technology will eventually break. Humans will mess up. With the right approach, however, user error and technological breakdown don’t have to result in disaster. Like the Boy Scouts say, Be Prepared! Here are several ways Green House Data keeps the unexpected at bay:

1) Audited and Standardized Change Management
To ensure change goes as planned—OS and security patches, backup restorations, migrating systems to the cloud—documented and standardized methods are essential. When every employee knows the steps for each process, and follows a system of checks and balances to guarantee they work appropriately, managers can rest easier. If anything does go wrong, this also makes it simple to work backwards and find exactly what step resulted in the error.

2) Round-the-Clock System Monitoring
We’ve had clients tell us they received a ticket notification before they even knew there was a problem. That goes for customers who don’t have any managed services, too. The best way to get a jump on sudden problems is constant vigilance. By keeping an eye on compute resources used, IP networks and port monitoring, potential issues can be spotted in advance and avoided by scaling resources or configuring network settings.

3) Backup and Disaster Recovery
System downtime is expensive, especially if businesses lose essential files or e-mail servers. Depending on the implementation, a backup solution can restore critical files in a matter of minutes and full systems in just hours.

4) Redundant Systems and Generators
Of course, there’s also the infrastructure itself. Green House Data sports N+1 redundancy virtually across the board, and N+2 in many cases. Our generators have 24 hours of diesel fuel and we have refuel contracts in place. All of these systems work together to help us guarantee our near-100% SLA, keeping your business data chugging along happily.

Don’t worry. Your server isn’t going to burst into flames as soon as you migrate into the cloud. But by reminding ourselves that technology will break and humans will fail, our team is prepared to solve a wide range of possible IT issues, before they ever negatively affect customers.

Posted By: Joe Kozlowicz