Building Power Outage IT Management Greater Tokyo
IT shutdown and recovery for Japan's mandatory building inspections
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Power Outage Management
- Professional shutdown procedures
- Equipment change opportunities
- Comprehensive testing validation
- Detailed outage reporting
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. Whether it's a Tokyo office building or a client warehouse facility in Tsukuba or Chiba, regular power outages are mandated for fire code inspections and equipment maintenance. 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 (Greater Tokyo area including Chiba, Ibaraki):
When to Bring in Professional Support
If you haven't managed a building power outage before, it can be tempting to handle it internally. Before deciding, consider 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 any of those give you pause, it makes sense to bring in experienced support. eSolia handles IT system shutdown, power-up, and operational validation so your team does not have to take on the risk. We follow a structured approach (see our process management page for details) and deliver a detailed report at the end covering everything that happened.