Ok, all you network/IT experts

[blueonblack]

I work at a major transportation company, handling breakdowns on our equipment. We work with one particular nationwide chain of repair facilities that we have set up electronic communications with. One of our trucks comes in, they send us an e-mail of sorts over the Internet through their web site (I assume it's through their website as I have to log into the service from there).

Here's the question. This service went down tonight, and we got the following e-mail message from our rep who handles this service:

"looks like we will be down awhile longer. note from the server administrator...

we replaced the parts and began haveing other issues.

we will be receiving a new systemboard another new riser, a raid key, dimm, and raid battery
the server is down until they arrive. it will not work properly without raid controller operating correctly.
I am waiting for the parts an tech at the office."

Now granted I know nothing about networking or servers, etc, but this communication looks to me like they had a hardware failure. Is it not normal procedure for companies that do this to have backup hardware in place to prevent hours-long outages of service like this? I know the company I work for has a complete backup system that they can switch to in about ten minutes that looks and functions exactly like the primary. They've had to use it on a couple of occasions.

I guess I'm wondering if this is poor customer service or just my poor knowledge of the hardware/procedures involved. Since I just happen to know a place where several knowledgable fellows hang out, I thought I would ask.

[SgtM]

Sounds like just dumb luck. Backup hardware is situation/cost dependent IMO.. Unlike my company.. everything we have is fully redundant, and if we lost our primary data center, the backup would be online in seconds. That said, I work for the electric company. We cover Ohio, PA, and NJ.

[Datech]

Yea, definitely situation/cost dependent. They can be nationwide as far as their service goes, but they were probably either set-up by an in house IT guy or some consulting company who assured them that there would be absolutely no reason for that server and hard ware to go down. That, or their IT Manager doesn't have a real IT background, and decided to make himself look good by cutting the redundant server setup out of his budget. They'll probably rethink that strategy after this is handled though.