It wasn’t that long ago that Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (PG&E) implemented rolling blackouts throughout California in an effort to prevent wildfires — an unprecedented move in the U.S. My office in North San Jose was spared, but several other San Francisco Bay Area locations were met with power outages. Critics of the move say that PG&E was in the wrong for shutting off power, as it quickly became a public safety issue. It raised the question of how companies that rely on networks to run their businesses prepare for power outages.
As more organizations move their data to the edge, it has made networks more vulnerable to outages caused by natural disasters compared to when networks were mostly run out of a few centralized locations that had robust infrastructure and dedicated staff. But as the trend of moving to the edge shows no signs of slowing down — and as natural disasters, such as wildfires, hurricanes, and tornadoes increase in both regularity and severity — network engineers must create strategies to protect and sustain edge networks during natural disasters. The following best practices are a good place to start.