Preparing your data center for winter

As colder weather begins creeping in, it's time to start preparing for winter. Disaster recovery and data center backup planning is important all year long, but particularly so for businesses in regions that deal with sudden drops in temperature and volatile storms. 

Hurricane Matthew is just the type of event that demonstrates the critical need organizations have to ensure their data centers are protected. After all, you never know when disaster may strike  or the severe impact it could have on operations. Harsh weather conditions can hurt a business in a number of ways, from the physical damage caused by flooding to data loss from power outages.

Research from the Ponemom Institute found that 10 percent of unexpected facility outages last year were attributed to inclement weather, according to Data Center Frontier. It's safe to assume that, given the heavy snow fall and dramatic temperature drops that are often experienced throughout the winter months, it's best to prepare data centers for the worst. This is why, the source explained, businesses must enlist the help of "a colocation provider that has numerous redundancies in place, including backups for the electrical and network connectivity systems." 

You don't want to wait until disaster strikes to learn that your network surge protection is faulty. If this seems like an inconvenience or is low on your priority list right now, consider what the cost will be if you don't prepare. For example, according to Tech Target, the cost of experiencing an unexpected data center outage is now approximately $9,000 per minute. To prepare your data center for the winter, one of the first places to start is by assessing the effectiveness and efficiency of your current data backup systems.