Power Protection FEATURED ARTICLE

We don’t think twice about performing preventative maintenance on our mission critical devices in our data center as it is imperative in assuring the continued success of the infrastructure… right??

Well, in the data center space – where human error is one of the leading causes of downtime – a vigorous maintenance schedule can actually have the adverse affect on the data center as it can make the facility less reliable and more prone to downtime.

“There’s this mantra that more maintenance equals more reliability,” said Steve Fairfax, president of MTechnology, at last week’s 7×24 Exchange Fall Conference. “We get the perception that lots of testing improves component reliability. It does not. The most common threat to reliability is excessive maintenance.”

In fact, according to Fairfax, whose firm has conducted in-depth analyses of failure rates in data centers, too much maintenance can actually be disruptive to optimal configurations for reliable operations and contribute to bouts of downtime.

“The purpose (of maintenance) should be to find defects and remove them,” said Fairfax. “But maintenance can introduce new defects. And whenever a piece of equipment is undergoing maintenance, your data center is less reliable.”

From maintenance to lightning bolts to severe heat, there are a multitude of factors out there that can contribute to downtime. In fact, this summer companies were quick to catch downtime fever as businesses from Amazon to Go Daddy to Microsoft (News - Alert) came in contact with the big, bad downtime wolf. Accordingly, there is a greater need than ever before to purchase power protection units that can bring businesses back up and running in seconds for in today’s IT environment, even one second of downtime can be catastrophic for a business.

One company charging forward in the power protection race is Minuteman UPS/Para Systems (News - Alert), a leading provider of power protection technologies. Minuteman boasts a line of Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS) for computers, servers, peripherals, voice and data communication systems, security systems and other mission-critical equipment.

Recently, the company sat down with TMCnet to discuss the top five unexpected events that can leave you in the dark, aside from maintenance.

“Administrators often think of the obvious causes of power outages, which include natural disasters such as lightning, high winds, and earthquakes, when constructing a disaster plan,” Duston Nixon, marketing communications specialist for Minuteman, told TMCnet. “While these events usually take the forefront both in people’s minds and in the media, other less expected factors can lead to outages.”