Recently, many companies have been plagued by power outages at their data centers. For example, a power outage at Delta Air Lines’ data center resulted in economic losses of up to $150 million. Another example is the power outage at the Super Bowl stadium, which disrupted the game’s schedule.
During operation and maintenance, data centers face many challenges, such as data center operating costs, which require budgeting and planning before building a data center. Another challenge is rising energy costs, which can be mitigated by using new technologies such as virtualization and cloud hosting, which can significantly reduce energy costs.
For example, maintenance and cooling requirements: data center facilities and components need to operate continuously around the clock at suitable temperatures, which requires a sophisticated cooling system to maintain the required temperatures.
In fact, data centers also face challenges such as communication integration, infrastructure requirements, lack of resources, server efficiency, data center security, and network congestion. Among these, the challenges of data centers occupy an important position. So what causes power outages? Operator errors, power outages, or even server overload can lead to system crashes.
Although data center power outages are a very serious problem, we still hope to find relevant solutions.
Here, we need to clarify a few issues.
1. Upgrade the power system in response to changes in data centers.
It’s fair to say that the power demands of a data center constantly change at different stages. For example, adding servers or switches can generate significant power requirements. Therefore, timely understanding of the data center’s power needs during specific periods is crucial. Furthermore, a reasonable assessment of the data center’s power supply is necessary to prevent overloading, insufficient power, and power outages.
2. Know everything about all interconnected devices and systems.
Crucial for data center operations is the need to record the power chain, from the power entering the building to the power supplied to all rack equipment via UPS and PDU.
This means that data center operations need to know which power-related devices are involved and their interdependencies. This allows data center operations to understand the potential impact of device failures or offline maintenance. Furthermore, the status of each power chain device should also be known.
Power management can be achieved through Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM). DCIM enables data center operations to run the data center at maximum efficiency, while allowing all stakeholders to improve overall operations and identify vulnerabilities, thereby maintaining a secure power chain.
Deploying DCIM also allows data center operations to have a comprehensive understanding of their products, eliminating communication silos between IT and facilities by sharing real-time data and easy-to-understand charts.