I hope there are no storms ...
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I hope there are no storms ...
I saw this piece recently on generator delays for osme data centers. Apparently the companies that build large generators, which are used for emergency power in data centers and just about every other place that needs to keep electronics running, can't keep up with demand. That's good for their business, but it has me concerned.
It's not quite a boom, but this past summer as I researched new colocation possibilities for SQLServerCentral.com, it seemed that almost every data center I visited was building out more space. I guess more companies are putting their servers in a commercial center and running a big (cheap) pipe back to the office. It's a good strategy and it's nice for the colocation centers.
But if there's a good sized boom, do you think the data center people are turning away business because they don't have enough generator capacity? Or will they take the business and gamble that there won't be any major power disruptions? Or will they buy smaller generators and provide different classes of power service?
I'm probably too cynical, but I can't help but think that some companies will short the customer, pray for a generator delivery soon, and hope they don't get caught.
I just hope it's not one of my data centers.
Steve Jones
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Steve, even with dual data center battery backup UPSs, dual separate power grid feeds, dual internet 'fat' pipes going to different level 1 providers and dual generators we still have had issues. There are engineering ones - switch failures and the like mainly ... and human ones - we 'over amped' a data center UPS (it started at 80%) ! So when its twin tripped we lost all power.
So even when you have all of the bells and whistles human error (not balancing of the UPS capacity or overloading of your UPS) and mechanical failure of complex failover switching components still can happen. Granted not often, but these failures do occur when they can hurt you the most. Thankfully when we had major (total) outages we did not lose any hardware, software or applications data. Not too shabby.
RegardsRudy KomacsarSenior Database Administrator"Ave Caesar! - Morituri te salutamus."
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And don't forget just plain metal fatigue. When I was at Peoplesoft we saw the entire data center (including my office) drop power one afternoon. they were working on the power transfer switch, which was in need of replacement. When they went to work on it, the other switch flipped
and failed. (same brand/model)
So we were without power for about 2/3 of our 500+ servers. Just so happened the CTO was walking through as it happened. Not a fun time.
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