Is your data center high availability?

Modern enterprises expect a lot from their data centers. They're housing sophisticated equipment that needs to be able to run continuously, even in the event of an unexpected power outage. 

Unplanned power outages can lead to downtime, and have serious effects on a businesses, disrupting all operations and upsetting both vendors and customers. High availability data centers are prepared. A data center with high availability is one with equipment and systems that are operational for a very long period of time. Maintaining continuous operations requires taking a number of measures. 

Employees, equipment and processes all play major roles in a data center's availability. Neglecting any of these can be problematic and keep your data center from high availability. 

Developing an experienced and knowledgeable data center team
Hiring talented employees and training them properly are important because data center workers are the ones implementing redundancy policies and managing the critical environment equipment. In addition to your own in-house team, bringing in an outside expert to analyze your IT efficiency yields many benefits. An outside expert can take a fresh view of your IT infrastructure and provide industry expertise on employee training and power best practices. 

One example of a high availability process is a failover. Chris Alberding of Data Center Journal explains a failover as configuring servers to "switch responsibilities to a remote server when needed." This creates a secondary component that can take over during maintenance, or in the event of an unplanned power outage. Transferring from a primary component to a secondary one should be seamless for users. 

Creating a higher level of redundancy
Redundancy ensures reliable power by establishing tiers of failsafe options. For extended outages, uninterruptible power supply bridges the gap to an alternate power source. If there is a disturbance, UPS systems kick in and keep the most crucial and sensitive equipment running, providing time for a proper shutdown or a standby generator. It only takes a moment of power loss to wreak havoc on an unprotected data center, so the short period of protection that UPS offers is critical. For longer outages, generators are great investments. 

However, a single tier of standby generators might not be enough for high availability. A recent study by the Idaho National Engineering laboratory determined that 15 percent of emergency diesel generators failed after operation continuously for over eight hours. Given that generators aren't perfect and could potentially fail if operating for a long period of time, it's important to consider generator redundancy. 

For assistance building a high availability data center, contact Custom Networks. Our experts can provide energy audits for your data center, as well as UPS consulting. We also sell APC products to provide uninterruptible power. Visit our site for more information.