Preventing unplanned data center downtime

According to recent study, data center outage costs alone stacks up IT expenditure and the revenue loss can be as low as few hundred dollars or as high as millions. Avoiding unwanted downtime issues is complex but not impossible and not to forget help is always available for those who need it. There are multiple articles, research papers and other sources highlighting the causes of IT infrastructure power interim and these links are indeed helpful.

Let’s get into this and discuss some risk mitigation techniques to evade unplanned outages.

Data Center Outage Cost

Ponemon Institute recently released its research papers that denote the average IT outage cost. It states that in 2015, the cost swiftly increased to $740,357 that is 38% up since 2010. The aftereffects not only include finance loss, but also major disruption in data center operations, followed by inefficiency.

The downtime cost is rapidly multiplying for businesses that are entirely dependent on data centers. Faulty UPS system is mostly held as the culprit for the power failure, as it contributes to one-quarter of such disastrous event.

However, researches also claim that above all the other inducing factors such as UPS failure, cybercrime, technical fault, there is one factor that results in outage, which is human error. The reports cited that nearly 22% of outages were a consequence of human error. For instance, a technician monitoring the server room might accidentally come in contact with the cables connected to PDUs, resulting in disconnection of wires that already were unbind by vibration and extreme exhaust heat behind the data center servers rack. Here are three key considerations for evade downtime.

• Installing intelligent and redundant systems to prevent UPS component from collapsing.
• Better automation can help avoid user errors because it ensures that the systems follow the policies and procedures by itself.
• Invaders can be prevented by smartly investing on security features. The better the security, the safer will be the networks.

Applying these minor approaches can save the unwanted downtime expenses. So are you taking the necessary preventative actions?