IT Management for Planned Power Outages
Required Annually in Japan Buildings
A Japan Regulatory Requirement
Japan’s fire code requires buildings over a certain size to be inspected annually, and this always includes a power cycle requirement. Typically, the power is taken down by the building sometime on Friday night or Saturday morning, and is restored again on Sunday. It’s necessary for IT to be involved for all but the smallest systems, to make sure computer systems are properly shut down, then powered up and tested after the outage.
During Japan’s Annual Power Outages
We have found while stewarding so many of these power outages, that there are invariably problems in 90% of cases. Some piece of equipment breaks or starts producing errors. In the end it’s a good exercise, in that one would rather have the break occur while you’re watching the system, but it’s frustrating nonetheless. If eSolia is there leading the process, we can also deal with the issues.
Time during the event is usually tight, but we often take the opportunity to execute a change request. It could be removing old equipment or cable from the rack, or mounting new equipment. Or taking the opportunity to upgrade device firmware. If it is something that takes time, we’ll usually do it on the evening before.
Once the power is restored and your systems are successfully powered on, testing and validation has to be performed. It’s often done partially by us, and partially by a user of the client. We can assist your users to help them test and document the results.
Documentation
The annual outage is a good opportunity to take stock and update all the regular documentation, such as network diagrams, rack equipment diagrams, or IT inventory lists.
At the end of the outage, eSolia will produce a report about everything that happened and what we observed, then submit that to local stakeholders and overseas IT management et al as needed.
Timeline
Here is a typical timeline for a planned power outage in Tokyo:
Friday 19:00~21:00
Apply planned changes
Saturday 8:00~11:30
Perform system shutdown procedure
Saturday 12:00~
Building shuts down main power, begins tests and inspection
Sunday ~12:00
Building restores main power, announcing over PA
Sunday 12:00~
Begin system startup procedure
Sunday 13:00~
Discover and resolve issue!
Sunday ~15:00
Final restoration validation complete!
Sunday ~17:00
Report submitted
eSolia is Here to Help, Leave it to Us!
Business users with weak understanding and and knowledge of IT sometimes think “I can do this myself”. They should ask themselves these questions:
- Am I an IT expert?
- How many outages have I led before?
- If something does happen (because it will), can I fix the problem?
- Do I know how to explain the problem, if it happens?
- Do I know exactly who to call, in the event of a problem?
If the answer to those is negative, you should call us, because it is far less risky to ask the experts at eSolia to handle your outage. There is simply no need to take on that risk. Leave it to eSolia to handle the IT systems shut down, power up and operational validation that is needed in these cases. We’ll handle your power outage in an organized manner (see our process page for others), and you get a detailed report about what happened at the end.
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Interested in getting our help with this service or solution? Please contact us today.
