The year 2021 will soon be ending. For many businesses and homes across the world, it will be remembered for the power outages that deprived them of power over long periods of time. The large-scale outages were variously caused by historically cold weather that froze natural gas pipelines (Texas), a severe wind storm (Melbourne), a frequency drop at a power plant (Pakistan), droughts that reduced hydropower production (China), to name a few.

For DC owners and operators, power interruptions in the distribution grid seldom have an impact on operations, thanks to UPS systems and generator sets. Rather, problems with on-site power are a major cause of power outages in DCs. Indeed, the 2021 Uptime Institute Global Data Center Survey found that while outages in DCs continued to decrease in number as systems and processes became more reliable, on-site power glitches accounted for 43% of failures, up from 37% a year ago. More than 800 DC owners and operators participated in this year’s survey, with 16% from Asia Pacific and 5% from China.

Not surprisingly, human error also continued to be a big bugbear in DCs, with more than three-quarters of respondents stating that it was involved in an outage. A similar percentage had the opinion that better management, processes, or configuration could have prevented an outage.

Outages are avoidable

Thankfully downtime due to on-site power glitches, human error and sub-optimal management, processes, or configuration can be prevented and owners and operators should not accept outages as an unavoidable part of DC reality.

One major root cause of on-site power problems is inadequate power management. Here, the “you cannot manage what you don't measure” adage applies too. Using intelligent racks, network-connected PDUs and sensors, owners and operators can easily and remotely measure and manage such parameters as the amount of power consumed by each asset in the rack, rack-level power consumption, power factor, etc.

Using such insightful data, they can monitor and optimally configure the available power capacity for each rack, be alerted to degrading power supply assets, switch and control power outlets, optimize rack assets and space, and better plan whole-DC power capacity, power protection and cooling infrastructure, thus reducing the risk of outage from the server level all the way to the entire facility.

Furthermore, such information enables DC owners and operators to take a proactive approach to power management, paving the way for advanced alarming for early visibility to issues, allowing them to stop budding problems before they have a chance to become bigger and more damaging ones.

Reducing Human Error

As for outages caused by human error, they can be minimized or even eliminated by restricting DC and rack access only to authorized persons, as well as deploying push-button locking outlets that prevent cables from being accidentally dislodged, cable retention clips that guarantee power cables will remain in their outlets, and color-coded locking power cords (one color per PDU).

By employing the correct solutions for power management and reducing human error, as well as improving processes and configuration, DC owners and operators can significantly reduce the risk of outages that can lead to lost revenue, time, resources, regulatory non-compliance and reputational damage.

Raritan solutions that address these areas include network-connected PDUs, intelligent rack controllers, sensors, SmartLock electronic door access and control system, SecureLock cables (available in 10 colors), and more.