(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Dallas County’s IT systems were down for more than three days last week following a flood in the basement of the Dallas County Records Building that was caused by a break in the water line last Monday, according to a report by Data Center Knowledge.
The basement of the building houses the UPS systems as well as other electrical equipment that supports the facility located on the fifth floor.
The county had ignored previous warnings in a 2008 consultant’s report that it was suseptible to a service disruption since it didn’t have a backup data center in place.
The water main broke around 10:30 p.m. Monday, subsequently flooding the mechanical room with six feet of water and immediately forcing operators to shut down the facility.
Building staff was not able to safely restore the power until early Friday.
It took three days for the county to pump out all the water, and since it was mixed with oil and mud it needed to be distributed into taker trucks rather than the sewer system.
According to a report by the Dallas News, the “county’s criminal justice system nearly ground to a halt”.
Many of the courts have converted their records into electronic form in recent months and destroyed paper versions, the paper reported.
The county’s IT department is now designing a failover plan, which it expects to submit an updated plan for in two weeks.
The data center’s staff used a portable generator and UPS to restore power early Friday, and also checked servers to ensure they were properly restarted.
Despite the potential consequences, the county said that no critical data was lost.
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