New York and New England continue to brace for Nemo, a potential Nor'easter snow storm that could trigger blizzard conditions on Feb. 8 and 9.

Joe Panettieri, Former Editorial Director

February 7, 2013

2 Min Read
Nemo Blizzard, Nor'easter Snow Storm: MSPs Issue Customer Alerts

url

New York and New England continue to brace for Nemo, a potential Nor’easter snow storm that could trigger blizzard conditions on Feb. 8 and 9. Among those making storm preparations: MJ Shoer, president of Jenaly Technology Group, an MSP and IT service provider in Portsmouth, N.H. The company issued a storm advisory to its customers earlier today, offering a list of best-practices ahead of the potential blizzard. Here’s a look a the guidance.

The memo from Jenaly to customers stated:

“With the projected blizzard due to arrive during the afternoon tomorrow and continue overnight and into Saturday, we wanted to remind you of a few prudent steps to take to secure your IT systems in the event of a power outage or a more severe storm than anticipated.

As of Thursday afternoon, the snow is forecast to be light and fluffy, not heavy and wet so the greatest threat may be that of scattered power outages due to high winds. Whenever faced with the possibility of power outages, we recommend unpugging all non-essential electronics from their electrical outlets, to protect against any significant power surges that may result.  If you have equipment plugged in to surge protectors, simply unplug the surge protector from their outlet after powering down all the connected equipment.  For small UPS units, we recommend unplugging them as well, and actually turning them off, so you do not drain the battery or hear the beeping.  Again, be sure to properly power down any connected devices before disconnecting power.

If any equipment is near windows that could be damaged by high winds, we recommend moving the equipment away from these areas.

We recommend you take the above steps at whatever time you close your office on Friday afternoon.

Your servers and network equipment are protected by robust UPS devices that should protect them throughout the storm.  Our team will be actively monitoring your network for outages and will respond as needed.  We will only reach out to you if we see your office impacted beyond the time when we would expect to see things return to normal.

We will have team members on-call throughout so please use your normal procedures for reaching us after hours, should that become necessary.  Here’s hoping for a nice winter snow storm without any negative repurcussions.  Enjoy the snow and stay safe.

Your Jenaly Team”

Shoer says his strategy ahead of storms is pretty simple: Communicate, educate and reassure customers that Jenaly is ready to assist them. The main short-term risk he sees is wind-related power outages.

In terms of protecting customer data, Jenaly is migrating to Intronis, which offers cloud-based backup services. The latest Intronis release supports VMware, a key requirement for Shoer. His company still has a few legacy Zenith Infotech BDR solutions in the field, and tested AppAssure as well but ultimately decided to standardized on Intronis.

Read more about:

AgentsMSPsVARs/SIs

About the Author(s)

Joe Panettieri

Former Editorial Director, Nine Lives Media, a division of Penton Media

Free Newsletters for the Channel
Register for Your Free Newsletter Now

You May Also Like