A busy week
It's been rather busy for the past few days. One of our stores lost both internet access and phone systems early on in the week due to a fairly major accident at the construction site a block or two away. Apparently there were a few power, data, and phone lines torn up when one of the vehicles dug in the wrong spot. This knocked out both the primary connections as well as our redundant lines.
The problem with modern workplaces is that they come to a grinding halt without computer access. Interestingly enough, they managed to sell more cars during the first day of outage than the other four dealerships in the area. I still can't figure out how they managed to pull that off. After that, however, things started to get complicated.
Without access to our systems, they were unable to process any of the deals, check anyone's credit, or enter any tickets for service. After things started to pile up, the decision was made to purchase two Verizon EVDO cards and use VPN to get back into the network. I was called in an hour or two later to install the software for the cards, as well as get everything else set up.
Upon arriving, I was informed of the plan. They were going to install the software for the Verizon cards on six computers, and switch the cards between them depending on who needed it. I've honestly never heard of anything like this, but it sounded like it would work. After some fiddling around with the VPN software, I managed to get it to work just like they wanted. Everyone would work off of two wireless cards, swapping them out and waiting until they got their hands on another one before continuing to work. It was a brilliant, if horribly inefficient, strategy.
While many other things popped up along the way (Server crashed, licensing issues, etc.), this was pretty much the major even for the week. I'd rather not have a repeat.
The problem with modern workplaces is that they come to a grinding halt without computer access. Interestingly enough, they managed to sell more cars during the first day of outage than the other four dealerships in the area. I still can't figure out how they managed to pull that off. After that, however, things started to get complicated.
Without access to our systems, they were unable to process any of the deals, check anyone's credit, or enter any tickets for service. After things started to pile up, the decision was made to purchase two Verizon EVDO cards and use VPN to get back into the network. I was called in an hour or two later to install the software for the cards, as well as get everything else set up.
Upon arriving, I was informed of the plan. They were going to install the software for the Verizon cards on six computers, and switch the cards between them depending on who needed it. I've honestly never heard of anything like this, but it sounded like it would work. After some fiddling around with the VPN software, I managed to get it to work just like they wanted. Everyone would work off of two wireless cards, swapping them out and waiting until they got their hands on another one before continuing to work. It was a brilliant, if horribly inefficient, strategy.
While many other things popped up along the way (Server crashed, licensing issues, etc.), this was pretty much the major even for the week. I'd rather not have a repeat.