Options for boosting datacenter uptime

Author: ArunThere is a nice article about datacenter downtime problems in the latest issue of GCN mag. This one is by Drew Robb and it touches upon some of the common causes of downtime in datacenters.

What would it take for your data center to go off-line? For one government agency, all it took was some routine cleaning. In 2000, the Cincinnati State Technical and Community College was installing new servers and storage as part of an Active Directory migration. Just before the equipment went live, however, the janitor plugged in a vacuum cleaner, which was enough to blow out the transformer serving the entire wing. It turned out that the science department had also installed some equipment on the wing, and, unbeknownst to the systems administrators, the building was maxing out its electricity capacity — and putting its information technology operations at risk.

The article also discusses some useful options to boost datacenter uptime. These options include having good power and cooling systems in place, good redundancy, having good monitoring tools in place, following data center best practices, etc. Read full article here.