TEST & MEASUREMENT
By Robert Neave, CTO &
Co-founder, Nlyte Software
www.nlyte.com
In the years to come businesses will require services
from faster and more complex data centres
to support their customers
The need for more complex services certainly holds great
opportunities for data centre providers. However, they
still need to make sure they deliver their services under
regulations in a competitive market. To guarantee great
service quality, they must test their infrastructure to its
limits, ensuring data centres remain as risk free from failure
as possible. One basic but fundamental element they need
to test and consolidate is power.
Indeed, failures in power management can have sweeping
effects. In the last couple of years, data centre provider
Global Switch has faced multiple power issues. Furthermore,
as the much-publicised BA data centre outage in 2017
demonstrated, sometimes you just need to ensure no one
pulls out the plug or flips the wrong switch.
A proactive approach
By approaching power chain integrity with a proactive
mindset, organisations can best mitigate the chances of
suffering a power outage. By minimising this risk, they can
remain functional, reputable, and profitable. First, businesses
should document their power chains from start to finish. This
means analysing where power enters, through to the UPSs,
PDUs, and out to all elements of rack-mounted equipment.
With a grasp over the power chain, data centre managers
can understand the potential impact of an outage should a
certain piece of equipment fail, or be taken offline.
In addition, businesses must be cognisant of their
equipment. They must know the maintenance status for
their power chain devices, bearing in mind when each
is reaching the end of its life cycle. In this way, they can
efficiently maintain their power chain before an old piece of
equipment or one with a known issue causes an outage.
Make a roadmap with simulations
Power failure simulations are a great way to minimise risk
in the data centre. Data centre operators can virtually
switch devices off, without affecting the real production
environment. This ability allows organisations to establish
a carefully thought out action plan to recover services
should the worst happen. Too often, data centre operators
assume that their power chain and backup systems are
foolproof and have neglected fail-safe tests only to find
their organisation making headlines for the wrong reasons.
Simulations enable organisations to locate likely pinch
points in their data centre.
Pinpoint weaknesses
Traditionally, security has never fallen into the remit of the
facility manager. Rather, it has always been something that
the IT department has taken care of. However, now that
data centres have stronger and more powerful connections
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with the outside world, they lie vulnerable to easier attacks.
There is a clear meeting between security and power issues
and data centre managers should not ignore it.
To safeguard against such vulnerabilities, organisations
must shore up their security measures. Such precautions
include changing passwords regularly and ensuring that
outside contractors only have access to devices that they
need, and certainly not anything that can shut systems
down. Organisations should also invest in a proven power
management solution that can be realised with a data
centre infrastructure management (DCIM) solution. With
these tools, IT and facility personnel can run their data
centres as efficiently as possible. This allows stakeholders
to keep improving overall operations and simultaneously
identify vulnerabilities to keep the power chain risk-free.
For many organisations, a power outage is the worst-
case scenario. Not only can it affect the day-to-day in the
short-term, it can also have a long-term influence on the
business’ reputation. Customers who read that a data
centre has suffered an outage will be less likely to subscribe
to its services, as past performance is sometimes their only
evidence to make future predictions. Reputation keeps
customers coming back for more. If that is hampered, it will
do as much harm to future profits as the downtime itself.
In the end, mitigating risk is all about keeping watch over
the power chain and planning for the worst. With such an
approach, organisations can be assured that their data
centres are fail-safe. n
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