Flashback to the early 1990s, when this IT pilot fish is working for a big credit card company. “They decided it was time to do a disaster drill and test the generators and recovery processes,” says fish.

“This was a big deal — they even had a helicopter arranged to bring a backup tape from a backup facility across town.

“After tons of planning, the time came to execute. So at the appointed time, the external power was cut to the data center and the generator faithfully kicked in.

“Everything was going according to plan for about 20 minutes — and then all of a sudden the generator shut down and the whole drill had to be stopped.

“A postmortem determined that the fuel pump that supplied fuel from the large underground tanks to the generator tank was running on external power. Oops!”

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