Well............. would your installation withstand a volcanic erruption or a cat 5 hurricane?
Well, having lived in south Florida my whole life, and running a 24/7 no down time allowed per UL network, I can answer with a resounding YES. (at least the hurricane part)

Back when Wilma slammed us, my network here in south florida had no power for almost 2 weeks. Yet we were still operating on back up generators and UPS systems during the entire two weeks. The only problem we did have was an outage of one of our internet providers because the CO's generator ran out of fuel. The system detected this and switched all traffic to one of our many backup providers located at a different CO. (one with power)

Beyond that though, the hardest thing getting through was securing the needed propane for our 450KW and 750KW generators. At the time we had a tank that could last 3 days per fill. We have since upgraded to a 7 day per fill tank, and signed a contract ensuring us fuel in times of emergencies like that.

It was definetly an eye opening experience, and I am happy to say that our systems held up just as planned.


Although not needed, we are able to also divert all services to a sister office we have in Chicago. So even if the last straw were pulled (ie no more propane) we can still move all services out of South Florida, to Chicago, almost seamlessly.

We got very close to that while waiting for fuel. We were on day 3, and had not heard from the propane company at all. We thought we were screwed an were preparing to move all services. Luckily the propane truck showed up and continued to show up for the duration of the power outages.

Propane is quite the commodity during a hurricane.


-xmad