Will power outages threaten your data?

The UK National Grid has advised that the risk of power blackouts in the winter of 2013/14 is at its highest for several years with margins of availability half what they were a year ago. This is bad news for consumers, but far worse news for organisations that rely on their electronic data. If the power goes off, so does the data – unless the data is already housed in a data centre with sufficient backup power to ‘ride the storm’. According to National Grid Director, Chris Train, ‘Things will be tighter than they have been historically’. The margin of availability, in other words the amount of spare power to cope with higher demand on cold days for example, is apparently only 5 percent – half that of a year ago – as we enter the winter months.

Data Centre Outages

Whilst clearly the shortage of power is a major concern for everyone, particularly the old and frail, the shortage of power could have a catastrophic impact on businesses. Most organisations, whether businesses, charities, public sector or private, rely heavily on electronic data today and many operate their own computer rooms or data centres. The problem is that many of these privately run data centres do not have generator backup facilities. What this means is that in the event of a power outage, the uninterruptable power supply, (UPS), might allow them time to shut down the servers, but they won’t be able to power them up again until the mains power is restored. When the power goes off it is generally relatively large areas that suffer meaning that there could be multiple data centre outages which would have a massive impact on businesses and would, potentially, be enough to affect UK Plc.

Choose your colocation provider with care!

Of course, there are a number of ways in which organisations can mitigate against these damaging outages. One way would be to install a backup deisel generator. This isn’t without problems though – firstly there is the cost of purchase, (these machines are not cheap), then there is the problem of space, (where to put it), there may well be planning consents to be sought, and then there is the fuel that will need to be stored. None of these issues are insurmountable, but for some organisations the problems are not ones that they wish to take on. Another alternative is to move your data to a colocation data centre provider. Most colocation providers will have some sort of backup generator and some fuel onsite but, choose your colocation provider with care. If the data centre facility is in an area of high risk, (such as London and The Docklands), then the probability of an outage is higher. Whilst they may have on-site generators, how much fuel do they have? Are the generators tested regularly? Will they start in an emergency? There are numerous cases of generators not starting or running out of fuel – do you want to be a victim or such an incident?

Electricity of the future

It is interesting that the day after the UK National Grid reports such worrying news that the National Ignition Facility, (NIF), in California announced that it has passed an important milestone in the bid to produce nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion is very different from Nuclear fission that is used to generate electricity in nuclear power plants today. Nuclear fission requires atoms to be split and uses highly radioactive materials. Nuclear fusion requires that the atoms are squashed together causing intense heat and energy. The point of nuclear fusion is that it should be sustainable – in other words it should produce more energy than is required to make it happen. This is the milestone that the NIF has passed. Late in September in an experiment, the NIF produced nuclear fusion that generated more energy than was required to produce the fusion. This is a major step forwards in the world of nuclear fusion and could, if it can be scaled to be commercially viable, mean that the world would no longer have to rely on fossil fuels for electricity generation and could effectively produce cheap, self-sustainable electricity.

There are other organisations striving to produce nuclear fusion too. Notably the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor or ITER programme in Europe. This facility is still under construction and uses a different method of producing nuclear fusion, (‘magnetic confinement’ rather than high power lasers), but none-the-less aims to produce fusion that is self sustaining and commercially viable. Unfortunately, in both cases the probability of the production of nuclear fusion to provide electricity is many years away and, for the UK, the problem is now.

What should I do?

There are, of course, several options open to organisations that might be concerned about the risk of power outages. The 2013/14 winter is an immediate risk, but in the longer term the world continues to generate and store data at an exponential rate and this requires more and more electricity. According to the Chief Executive of Energy UK, the ‘National Grid has demonstrated that the UK’s demand for energy is getting closer to the amount we can produce or buy in’. That should be a concern for every business or organisation that relies on the availability of their electronic data. It should also be a concern to anyone who uses the Internet, (Hmm, you must be using it to read this), because the Internet is served from data centres and, not all of them are particularly well placed to cope with power outages.

Option 1 is, of course, do nothing. Hope that we don’t suffer power outages and, in the event that we do, muddle through. This may be attractive to some businesses but it may be just too high a risk for others. Option 2, buy and install your own on-site backup power generator. This is perfectly viable as an option but will involve significant capital cost that may never be required and, for winter 2013/14 time is fast running out to get it installed before the cold weather sets in and we all start using more power. Option 3, move the data to a colocation data centre. This is probably the least disruptive option, (particularly if you use the skills of an organisation like Migration Solutions who is a specialist in this process), and the cheapest option other than to do nothing.

Care must be taken when choosing your colocation data centre provider though. Is the data centre in an area likely to suffer power outages? Who runs it? Do the people you are contracting with run it, or is it outsourced to someone else? Are they going to charge you for power that you don’t use? (Yes, many do!) Do they have generators? Are the generators tested and, if so, how often? How much fuel do they hold on site? Is it kept topped up? There are a number of other questions to be asked, but these would probably be a good start! Of course, you could save yourself a whole heap of problems and just come and talk to us at MigSolv. We have a cutting edge data centre that isn’t in an area likely to suffer power outages, we have generators on site that are tested both on and off load on a very regular basis and we have sufficient fuel to run the data centre at full load for over 8 days! Why not contact us now and find out what we can do to give you the comfort that your data will be available even if the power outages do happen. Oh, and just for your peace of mind, we run the data centre with our own full time experienced data centre staff … and that includes the maintenance!