Some data center power outages can lead to significant losses regarding the time it takes to restore the system and the costs involved in the process. Data centers have become critical in today's economy, but some are at risk of power outages due to outdated backup systems. Improving these systems can save money and avoid downtime that negatively impacts customers.
Data Center Power Outages are CIO's Nightmares
A significant outage can leave a business offline for hours or days, especially if the equipment is not backed up. In particular, a data center power outage can be costly because:
Companies may need more time and money if they migrate their systems or restore them from backups.
Servers will be damaged by heat buildup if there is no power.
Data centers will have to spend more energy to cool their servers during hot summer months when demand for air conditioning is high.
So, this is one of the CIO's biggest nightmares. Downtime is not an option.
How to Mitigate?
The leading cause of these data center power outages is terrible management and maintenance practices. These practices include manual monitoring and control of the data center equipment. Manual monitoring is time-consuming and requires much effort from technicians and engineers who may need to be trained better to handle such tasks.
When there are no systems or tools for monitoring the status of the equipment, technicians will be forced to check each unit's quality manually. Some organizations also need more technicians to watch every single piece of equipment or electrical system.
The good news is that data centers can prevent these problems by setting up a secondary generator able to run on natural gas or cleaner fuels that reduce emissions. This generator can kick in when the main one fails, providing enough electricity so that everything does not shut down at once. In some cases, a backup generator can be located far away enough from the main generator so as not to cause local pollution problems.
If you want to avoid costly data center power outages and increase your uptime, consider using a central management solution that allows you to seamlessly manage all aspects of your data center's power distribution systems.
Is Redundancy the Only Solution?
It's no secret that the world is becoming increasingly dependent on technology, so power outages will only become more costly and inconvenient.
Facilities like data centers, which house the servers that keep everything from email to social media up and running, are particularly vulnerable to power loss.
The reason for this is the intense amount of equipment in such a small space: hundreds or thousands of computers all working together to form a cohesive whole. When one server goes offline, it can cause a domino effect that affects an entire network. That's why it's so important for data centers to have redundant equipment which can take over when an original piece of hardware goes down.
Through redundancy, companies can save costs by not having to replace broken equipment. Moreover, if they don't have redundancy measures, they risk even more significant losses due to downtime. This problem could be solved by investing in redundancy upfront.
How to manage the cost of redundancy?
As we know, in Europe and the United States, the cost of electricity has increased significantly, and the cost of a disaster recovery center has also increased. However, the good news is that there are strategies to reduce redundancy costs.
One way that is often done is by relocating the disaster recovery center to a country where electricity and living costs are still cheaper, such as Indonesia. Unlike Singapore, Indonesia has a lot of natural energy wealth, such as gas and geothermal, so electricity costs in Indonesia are still much cheaper than in Singapore.
Many tech giants such as Alibaba, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have operated their data centers in Indonesia. You can follow these steps to overcome the unfavorable situation in Europe and the United States.
Read more about Green Data Center Brings Efficiency to Digital Business.
Conclusion
Data center power management is a crucial aspect of operations for most data centers. Data centers have several key areas where power can be managed and optimized to result in cost savings.
There are many reasons to keep a data center up and running: Disaster recovery, connectivity, and reliability. The cost of downtime, however, can be immense.
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