60% of data centre outages could have been avoided

One of the biggest concerns faced by data centre owners is unplanned downtime. Findings from the Ninth Annual Uptime Institute Data Centre Survey highlighted that power loss was still causing significant problems within the industry.

Of the 1600 operators and IT practitioners surveyed, power loss was found to account for a third of all outages, causing significant financial consequences. Particularly concerning is the knowledge that this figure mapped very closely to the results set out in the 2018 survey showing very little has been done to reduce this statistic.

Interestingly, 60% of respondents believed that with a better management strategy or process configuration in place, these outages could have been avoided. So why isn’t this being addressed?

Understandably, data centre outages are complex, with affected services spanning across multiple systems. However, it is all too common to see data centre managers become complacent, only counting the costs of failure once it occurred and not implementing personnel training, operational processes and management strategies to mitigate an initial failure.

An uninterruptible power supply is critical in any data centre’s management strategy and a careful understanding of future demands is just as important as analysing day one usage. Thought and planning must be given to ensure the UPS system can grow and adapt as the data centre matures and changes.

Modular data centre technology is becoming ever more popular for this very reason. Their flexibility and scalability allow the operator to install only what is needed, mitigating the need to oversize a UPS and reducing initial space and costs.

Fully expandable, these one stop-equipment solutions are simple, efficient and reliable. They not only offer a very practical solution to addressing the growing need to protect against downtime but they also provide greater TCO clarity.

To ensure long term, optimum performance from an uninterruptible power supply, a proactive maintenance contract should be in place. Even though UPS technology has moved towards digital processors (DSP), extraneous variables an affect the performance. Firmware updates are also crucial for ensuring the UPS system is working at peak performance and could impact the longevity.

Huawei and Legrand offer intelligent modular solutions, both ideal for a plethora of applications and can be configured to provide redundancy for all tiers of data centre.

For more information email info@powercontrol.co.uk or call the office on 01246 431431