Power Protection FEATURED ARTICLE

It may seem like a little well-known fact: if you work in a data center it is imperative that you do whatever it takes to keep a business up and avoid downtime. Think again.

According to a recent article, while the data center manager might have upper management breathing down his neck about keeping the data center up and running and exploring what power protection options exist, the team below the data center manager – a team that is just as responsible for ensuring uptime – might not really get the seriousness of this task.

“The facilities people often are looking after multiple buildings and – unless you’re an IBM (News - Alert) or something like that – your facilities people likely know very little [more than] zero about the true nature of the data center,” Gary Westaway, who ran data center operations for Sears Canada the past 35 years, said in a recent DatacenterDynamics article. “To them it’s no more important than the office building.”

Westaway, now a Dell (News - Alert) data center manager, said that while many data center managers are reminded frequently about how it important it is to keep the data center running around the clock, the staff responsible for maintaining that data center’s supporting infrastructure might not be getting it. So whose job is it to fix this oversight? The data center manager’s, of course.

During his time at Sears, Westaway said that the data center team did a lot of educational training over a long period of time to cement in the team’s minds the importance of avoiding outages. “They didn’t understand [that] without all that hardware there’s no reason to have all the office people there,” Westaway said.

Educational training includes making sure team members are up to speed with the critical components in the data center including CRAC/CRAH equipment, power protection units and batteries, generators, transformers, automatic transfer switches and diesel fuel tanks.

One company paving the way with its own educational campaign is Minuteman UPS/Para Systems (News - Alert), a leading provider of power protection technologies.

For power protection leader Minuteman, spreading the word about the dangers of downtime is an integral part of the company’s mission statement.

“Downtime due to power outages typically means no ability to communicate with the outside world if a power protection system isn’t in place,” Nixon said. “Every second a company cannot communicate with its customers is a potential disaster. An unanswered call at the least can lead to temporary dissatisfaction, and at worst can drive an established customer to a competitor.”

The best way to avoid the troubles associated with downtime is to develop a power protection plan – something which will eliminate any single point of failure within a business, according to Nixon.

“A system of intelligent uninterruptible power supplies such as Minuteman’s EnterprisePlus and Endeavor Series, power distribution units, as well as power management tools will ensure the lights stay on and the phones stay connected,” he said. “For mission critical applications, these products can be combined with backup generators to ensure operations in even the most extreme situations.”

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