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Redundancy In Data Centers
Category: Computers and TechnologyCollocation facilities allow businesses to outsource their network infrastructure by housing their equipment externally within a data center. If those collocation facilities are inadequate, business suffers from downtime, damaged hardware, and lost business. The characteristic of a reliable collocation facility is redundancy for every major system.
Redundant Power
Redundant power systems are critical. A power outage knocks out cooling systems, fire suppression, and Internet connectivity at the collocation facility, takes down all hosted business networks, and can even damage server hardware.
• UPS systems keep the collocation facility running while power is transferred to the generators. UPSs are computer-controlled devices, not just batteries, with hardware and software failures like other computer hardware.
• Generators must handle the total, regular facility load. If not, power will be lost for customers not connected to the generator. The generator and the UPS work together to eliminate the loss for power during a power failure.
Redundant Cooling
Servers produce a tremendous amount of heat, and a collocation facility can be overwhelmed with heat in minutes without properly engineered air conditioning. Collocation facilities HVAC systems never shut down, unlike regular climate controls such as standard HVAC equipment. The data centers A/C should be connected to the redundant power from the UPS and generator.
Redundant Internet Connectivity
Internet connectivity requires both redundant service and redundant hardware (routers and switches). Redundant service means that there are multiple Internet backbones available, at a minimum two and as many as six with Internet service routed among the different backbones for better reliability. This level of Internet connectivity ensures that the network stays reliable, with low latency and packet loss, even if major Internet backbones go down or equipment fails.
Christopher Souza is experienced in both sales and marketing for the technology industry. He is currently the Director of Sales for New England Data Services (NEDS), which is a data center offering managed data center services to SMB in Boston, MA. Chris holds a MBA in e-Business from the University of Phoenix and a Bachelors degree in accounting from the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth.
Tags: Redundancy