What are Emergency situations that can arise in an Information technology environment?

Answer 1

This depends on the branch of IT you're referring to. Here are a few examples for you, though:

• Network Administrators: Emergencies could include a gateway or network segment going down and OSPF not kicking in, resulting in lack of connectivity for users instead of packets being re-routed as needed, or mis-configuring a router or firewall remotely and being unable to get back in (shouldn't happen on today's appliances; there are ways around this).
• Security Admins: Emergencies include finding intruders on your network, confidential documents being forwarded outside of the company to unauthorized personnel, or other suspicious activity (ports opened where they shouldn't be, etc).
• Server Administrators: Viruses on servers, RAID controllers failing, HVAC systems failing to keep the servers cool, running out of disk space on servers or SANs.
• PBX Administrators: Voice T1 lines going down without a backup PRI, FXO/FXS Gateways failing, voicemail systems failing or running out of space.
• DB Admins: Database corruption, lack of failover in an Active/Passive cluster, running out of space on server or SAN.

As you can probably guess, there are many more--too many to list, but hopefully this will give you an idea.

I hope this helps!

Take care,

Rob Kendrick