When a storm hits…

On the night of Monday, March 6th at about 7pm, a strong line of storms rolled into the Kansas City Metro area. Before the night was over, strong winds, hail and heavy rain had inflicted serious damage throughout the region.

Avid’s network monitoring system picked up the first customer outage in Prairie Village at 7:24pm. Over the next two hours, approximately 40 clients experienced outages from many parts of the city. Our on-call staff could track the progress of the storm by the location of alarms coming into our network center.

Even while the storm was still raging, Avid was working to sort out actual circuit outages that might be caused by a downed wire versus those caused by power outages. For circuit outages, we’re able to open trouble tickets with any of the many network providers we use. The sooner tickets are opened, the higher our client gets in the repair queue… which can reduce the downtime by several hours. So we hustle to get tickets opened as soon as we can.

As with the March 6th storm, most of the outages were power related. And typically, the power comes back on fairly quickly. We’re always relieved as we see the “up” notifications being reported from our system.

The next morning is always a busy time, as power outages often cause network issues that must be resolved even after the power is back on. Companies and their IT support can work with Avid to verify that their circuit is operating properly and that their firewall is functioning correctly, helping to pinpoint and resolve any lingering problems before they become serious disruptions to a business’s operations.

Our vigilance, especially when the weather turns foul, is another way we are always “here for you so you can mind your own business.”