Power cut checklist for a small office server room

Power cuts are one of the most common causes of IT downtime in small offices, and badly handled restarts can do more damage than the outage itself. Keep this checklist somewhere you can reach without a working network.

1. Safety first

• Make sure everyone is safe and the area is accessible.
• Don't touch equipment if there's water, burning smells or visible damage. Call an electrician.

2. Work out what failed

• Whole building or street? It's a utility outage. Check your power supplier's outage map.
• Just the comms cupboard? Check for a tripped breaker, a failed UPS or a failed power strip (PDU).

3. While the power is off

• Check the UPS: how much load and runtime is left, and are any alarms showing?
• If runtime is short, shut servers and storage down cleanly rather than letting them crash.
• Don't keep switching things on and off. Repeated power cycling can corrupt disks and damage hardware.

4. Bring things back in layers

1. Network: internet router or firewall, then the core switches.
2. Storage: the NAS or storage servers. Let them finish their checks.
3. Servers and hosts: the virtualisation hosts or physical servers.
4. Applications: check the key services work, then tell staff.

5. Afterwards

• Did the UPS alerts actually reach someone by email or SMS?
• Which devices have only one power supply, or aren't on the UPS at all?
• Is it time to replace the UPS batteries? They typically last 3 to 5 years.
• Write down what happened and list improvements to make.

Want this sorted before it happens? We can set up UPS monitoring, automatic safe shutdown and alerting. Raise a ticket.