"The ability to restore data in minutes is moot if your server room's air conditioning system goes down for days. Is your cooling system up to its task? Do you have an emergency plan if it isn't? Have you tested that plan lately? Here are some cool ways to protect servers from heatstroke.
This anonymous tale of serial tragedy is a good example: The "redundant" air conditioning unit shut down when its twin's power supply overheated and died. The UPS unit on the email alert system lacked such overload protection so it fried. Water vapor condensed all over the server room floor. The functional AC unit was restarted and a repairman was called for the deceased unit, but the AC engineer could not arrive in less than three days. "Our AC failure stemmed not from a blowout but from a part failure: A fan belt broke on the primary AC unit. The secondary unit wasn't able to get rid of enough BTUs, so the room rose to 95 degrees. Our morning person opened the server room door and was blasted by the heat. He ran around opening every door possible, and scrounging every fan he could find to get air exchange set up. We lost a couple of servers and two UPS units to the heat."
