Cost-Effective IT: Hardware Failures, by Richard Sonnier

Houston Business Show "Advisor" Richard Sonnier, of the Information Technology Services firm Nimble Services, Inc., provides weekly information on our show about business technology issues. He can be reached at 281-445-4800 x250 or rsonnier@nimbleservices.com.

Last week, I reviewed some Internet advancements. This week I will discuss being prepared for IT failures.

Hardware Failures

Hardware fails sooner or later. You have to be prepared for it. The reliability of IT hardware has improved over the years so your company may go many years without a failure. However, at my company we see failures all the time. The top hardware failures are:

1. Disk Drives

2. Power Supplies

3. Voice and data connections

4. Video monitors

5. PC Motherboards

Most of these failures are easily fixed. You just replace the component. However, the number one failure is the disk drive and when it fails you lose all the data on it. It is very painful and expensive. If you need the data, there are services that will TRY to recover it from the failed disk. The cost run from $5000.00 to $10,000.00 per disk and the vendor make no guarantees. You have to pay up front and take your chances. More often companies have to recreate the failed data somehow. Either way the failure causes lots of downtime. To avoid this problem, make sure that you have good consistent backups and that you test them once a month. Remember the backup device is hardware too and it fails. Nothing is worse than finding that the backup hardware is dead when you go to do a data recovery.

After disk failures, power supply failures and related power problems are your big worry. Sometimes the power supply just fails completely and the system will not start. You just replace it. However, many times it only weakens and then the system will just crash seemingly at random. You lose time and work. This can be a very hard problem to resolve since there are many other things that can crash PC's. In addition, it might be the building power that is the problem. You should buy a UPS for any critical systems in your office. Make sure to get one that does automatic voltage corrections also called AVR so that the UPS will clean up bad building power. The UPS will also protect your PC from short power failures.

Next week, I will continue this discussion of IT failures.