Data centers are essential for keeping our increasingly digital lives online and connected. As technology advances and its use grows, these facilities require consistent power to ensure data access that keeps people happier, healthier and safer. A power outage can easily disrupt information exchange and increase the potential for harm to people, property and business assets. The following tips can help you prevent unplanned data center outages and effectively manage your systems if an outage occurs.
1. Assess Your Specific Risks
Many factors impact your facility’s specific risks, and understanding those is the first step in safeguarding against a power outage in your data center. When you objectively identify your known risks, you can make more informed decisions about how to mitigate them.
For example, some areas of the country are more vulnerable to severe weather like hurricanes or tornadoes, while other regions have an increased chance of blizzards or earthquakes. Implementing geographic redundancy may be a viable solution for reducing weather-related risks by ensuring duplicate data in another region.
2. Monitor and Maintain Your Infrastructure
Your data center’s infrastructure is the backbone of its operations and your biggest investment, so it’s necessary to pulse-check its health and maintain it properly.
Installing Sensors
The powerful servers you rely on generate substantial heat and are also sensitive to excessive amounts of it. Sensors can monitor the heat levels and alert your team when temperatures are getting too high so they can take immediate action to prevent equipment failure. Similar options exist to track environmental humidity, which can be equally as damaging.
Inspecting and Testing Assets Regularly
Regular inspection of equipment helps ensure your assets are ready to perform and stay that way. Design a routine maintenance checklist that includes physically examining and testing assets such as uninterruptible power supply (UPS) units, battery backups and surge protection solutions. Many data centers also conduct load testing to verify their infrastructure can keep up with demands.
3. Install a Reliable Backup Power Source
In reality, having little control over power company infrastructure means it’s challenging to prevent every data center power outage. Having backup power systems is instrumental in ensuring continued access when an unplanned event occurs. Choose a commercial propane- or diesel-fueled generator with enough capacity to power and run your mission-critical equipment. Consider automatic switching and fuel monitoring and refilling for maximum convenience and peace of mind.
Make Foster Fuels Your Partner for Staying Connected
Foster Fuels draws from over 100 years of fuel operations expertise to help data centers stay online during unplanned power outages. We are federal government prime contractors and keep backup generators fueled and prevent downtime throughout the 48 contiguous states.
Connect with our team online for more details.