The case of the not so user friendly software companies
After Hurricane Andrew struck South Florida, many companies had trouble proving legal ownership of their software. The storm either destroyed the books and disks or transported them miles from their origin. A number of software vendors were reluctant and in some cases refused to replace the software without the original disk or manual being presented.
Note to self: If time allows - collect manuals and disks and store them in a safe location to ride out the storm.
The case of the 'almost' payroll nightmare
A company had one employee who processed and stored all payroll and commissions data on one laptop. Now keep in mind this laptop also had multiple users and functions. The company had a sporadic, at best, backup to the server routine. And for over three years, most of the "backups" being done were to the local laptop. (Yes, we shook our heads too.)
Well the day before the company’s scheduled payroll cycle, the laptop crashed. The operating system was absolutely useless and completely unfixable leaving the company in serious trouble. Attempting to save them from disaster we installed the financial software on a desktop at company’s office; but restoring the data wasn't going to be that simple. Importing the most recent backup from their server, (which was over six weeks old) would leave them with less than 30 hours to re-enter six weeks worth of data to meet their payroll deadline.
It sounds just dreadful, doesn’t it? Well…have no fear! Spiderhost to the rescue…again! Our dedicated tech took the laptop home and worked through the night. He removed the hard drive, read it without reinstalling the Windows and transferred as many files as he could to one of our servers. The next morning, he walked the company through the process of uploading all their files dating back to the day of the crash to the replacement PC in their office.
It was down to the wire, but the deadline was met, payroll was saved….end of story, right? Well…close…The tech – knowing how extremely vital proper backups are - had to stress the importance of a strong backup policy and gave the company some helpful steps to take to ensure something like this never happened again.
What happened to the laptop, you ask? Well the tech stress tested the hard drive, scanned it for errors, reinstalled Windows XP and returned it to the company clean and working the next day. We just love stories with happy endings…don’t you?
The case of the Internet Traffic Jam
A regional sales VP for one high-tech office decided to send out a 40MB e-mail of his holiday party photos to his team. With centralized e-mail, that 40MB file was multiplied when it was redirected back to the users in the remote site. Given that there were 30 people from that sales team, the WAN was jammed up for nearly a half hour. In the meantime, additional mail client requests to the server were rejected and other major applications also timed out.
Now imagine if one of the other sales reps. sent a time sensitive billion dollar contract at the exact same time – those feel good holiday photos could end up costing the company a lot of cash! Having the right remote access solution in place to handle your traffic is critical!
Source: TMCnet article “Avoiding Network Horror Stories” by Jagan Jagannathan
The case of the Doctor’s Office disaster
One afternoon, two unsuspecting members of our Sales Team called on a doctor’s office in Altamonte. What they found inside absolutely horrified them. It turned out, they were having trouble with backups and the receptionist asked if one of our Reps. would mind taking a quick peek. The server was up front at the receptionist’s desk, along with all the backup tapes. There was no password. Our guy, who by the way, the receptionist didn’t know & simply walked over and started working on their server. He could have easily downloaded all their information to a thumb drive, or forwarded it via email. The hallways were lined with patient files, piled from the floor to the ceiling. Yes, personal, confidential patient files! Anyone could have seen the files, grabbed the tapes or worked on the server. It was a complete Security & HIPPA nightmare! - From both a physical and electronic standpoint.
ZDNet Top 10 IT disasters of all time
- A faulty Soviet early warning system nearly caused World War III. In
1983, a software bug in the Soviet system reported that the U.S. launched
five ballistic missiles.
- The AT&T network collapsed in 1990, caused by an error in a single
line of code in a software upgrade. Some 75 million phone calls across the
U.S. went unanswered.
- An Ariane 5 rocket exploded shortly after liftoff in 1996. According
to a New York Times Magazine article, the self-destruction was triggered
by software trying to stuff "a 64-bit number into a 16-bit space."
- Two partners used different and incompatible versions of the same software
to design and assemble the Airbus A380 jetliner in 2006. When Airbus tried
to bring together two halves of the aircraft, the wiring on one did not match
the wiring in the other. That caused at least a one-year and very costly
delay to the project.
- Navigation errors doomed two spacecraft sent to explore Mars in 1998
when one NASA contractor used imperial units and another contractor employed
metric units in the space crafts navigation systems.
- The British Child Support Agencys computer system operated by EDS overpaid
1.9 million people and underpaid some 700,000 in 2004, costing taxpayers
over 1 billion pounds.
- The two-digit year 2000 problem was more of a disaster avoided, except
for the cost. Fixing the code, according ton one estimate, topped $825 billion.
- When a Dell laptop exploded at a Japanese trade show in 2006, word of
other laptop fires began to surface. Faulty batteries were blamed. Two recall
programs for Dell and Apple cost battery maker Sony an estimated $185 million.
- Some 500,000 British citizens discovered in the summer of 1999 that
their new passports could not be issued on time because the Passport Agency
had brought in a new Siemens computer system without sufficiently testing
it and training staff first. The British government had to pay millions in
compensation, staff overtime and umbrellas for the poor people queuing in
the rain for passports.
- About 17,000 passengers found themselves stranded earlier this year
at Los Angeles International Airport when a network card persisted in sending
the incorrect data out across the network, causing a network failure and
forcing aviation official to ground planes. Nobody could be authorized to
leave or enter the U.S. through the airport for eight hours.
The case of the spendthrift server
A vintage auto part supplier called us complaining of noise coming from their
one and only, all-in-one server – a noise they described it as clicking. We
knew right away that the clicking meant bad hard drives, so we told them to
backup their data immediately and get replacement drives.
Since they spent $15,000 on the server, which was now 12 years old, they wanted
to get some more mileage out of it before replacing it. So they kept
using it.
A week later we got a call from them. The server was dead. When
we go there they told us that, luckily, they had a backup from the night before. So
we popped the tape in and found out the data on it was four years old. We
went through all the other backup tapes they had, and discovered that the backup
had not run in four years. Ouch!
We built them a new server with a backup system, but they had to manually
enter all of the information for those missing four years. How fun, right?
For you geeks out there reading this, yes we try hard drive recovery – three
times, with three different vendors. None of them could restore any data. Which
further illustrates just how important a properly-functioning backup is!
The case of the decade-old dental records
A dental practice had a computer from 1997 running their Softdent program. The software that held all of their customer files and patient records. The receptionist was in charge of the backups, and religiously switched out the backup tapes every night, for eight whole years. Since the drive made a noise every time she put a tape in, she thought it was doing the backup. Makes sense, right? Well, turns out that backup drive was a liar! When we tested the backup we found that it hadn’t worked since November of 1997 - nearly ten years! Even better, the hard drive was about to crash. It’s a good thing we got there when we did, huh? We built a new server for them and have local and remote backups working. Now they know their data is backed up. Phew! Actually, this is more of an almost IT horror story. But you get the point.
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