LowellDeeds

The Probate Court in Cambridge, the home of the Middlesex South Registry of Deeds, suffered an electrical failure early this afternoon. The power was restored in a relatively short period of time, but not before a number of customers traveled to Lowell to record their Cambridge documents at our satellite office. They were disappointed to learn, upon their arrival, that when Cambridge is down, the satellite office is down. That's not because we share a power supply - we don't - but because we share a computer server. The recording terminals that are physically located in the satellite office in Lowell are connected to the Cambridge registry server. That is how we are able to record documents simultaneously with Cambridge. With the wonders of modern technology, the work station that's 20 miles away performs just as well as the one that's 20 feet away. If Cambridge had stayed down for an extended period of time, say more than a day, we would be capable of bypassing the Cambridge server and recording directly to the Internet server in Boston. All the registries are working on disaster recovery plans right now that address that sort of scenario. Fortunately, the outage was short and we didn't have to improvise. But it was a reminder of the need to get those disaster recovery plans finished.