Disaster Recovery: Massive Water Damage
Kingsdale Capital Corporation is a leading, Toronto-based global financial services organization. They have become a name that is synonymous with quality offerings and industry innovation. Being one of our retainer-based customers, we’re committed to providing technology support so that KCC maintain their high standard of quality and innovation.
From the very beginning of the relationship, we understood that situated in the finance industry, Kingsdale called for a high degree of responsibility and attention. Downtime to Kingsdale could have serious consequences.
Situation
A business located above Kingsdale has a liquid-cooled air conditioning unit. On June 26, 2007 at approximately 1:00PM the water supply connector that went between the main waterline (which comes in from the city) and the backup line sprung a leak.
The leak found its way directly into Kingsdale’s server room. There was a significant amount of water pouring directly out directly above their equipment; the pipe in question was 4 inches in diameter and pressured to about 100psi.
Due to the obscure nature of the leak, it took several hours to locate the pipe and cut the flow of water.
Equipment destroyed included:
- All the networking equipment (6+ switches).
- SonicWALL® content filter.
- Keyboard/Video/Mouse (KVM) switch.
- Large Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS)
- 1 Power Distribution Unit (PDU)
- ParGain® DSL router.
Solution
Within 5 minutes, Angelo – one of our Field Support technicians – was on site.
In order to protect the equipment, Angelo stood over the equipment racks, deflecting the water with some cardboard. Once additional Quartet staff arrived, garbage bags were pieced together to form a plastic shroud over the hardware.
Following the initial stabilizing of the situation, Quartet immediately ordered new servers, assuming that the equipment was destroyed.
After an assessment by our network engineers, we found that the servers were in good shape. We stopped the preemptive order and succeeded in getting Kingsdale operational by next business day.
At 9:30AM on June 27, 2007, Kingsdale was running at roughly 95% capacity and we maintained our reputation of having customers up and running in less than 24 hours.
We also created initiatives for projects that included:
- Drip/Splash tray for above the servers.
- Netbotz® implementation.
- BC/DR planning.
Total business downtime for Kingsdale was approximately 6 business hours.
Results
“In any support situation, whether it be internally sourced or externally, there are many risks. The case has been made with Quartet because of their availability. We get the required response times for the same cost of hiring an in-house IT provider. In return, we get the leveraged expertise they have on staff.
Quartet has 5 to 6 specializations – which gives us access to a much larger talent pool opposed to hiring in-house support. During a recent disaster recovery situation we witnessed their model in action. While one Quartet staff assessed the damage, another ordered the needed components and someone else actually cleaned up the mess. Typical concerns of our computer and technology infrastructure have become nonexistent.
Quartet is the right firm for us.”
-Peter Notidis, Chief Financial Officer, Kingsdale Capital Corporation
