Keep the Juice Flowing

OK, so youve just invested in the latest and greatest servers, upgraded your operating systems, implemented your raid arrays, and transferred your mission-critical data across to the piece of technology that is going to drive your business forward over the next two years.

But let’s hope you’ve stored a few candles and a box of matches beside the keyboard! Today's businesses rely more than ever before on technology, which in itself relies on one thing – electricity!

Events last summer in the U.S., in Italy, and in the U.K. cities of Birmingham and London brought home the very real threat of massive electricity blackouts. A committee of Parliamentarians in the U.K. recently warned of potential problems with Britain’s aged and straining National Grid network.

Government advisors referred to it as a “clapped out” system that is nearing the end of its 40-year life span and is too dependent on imported gas for electricity generation. This risk is further compounded by the increased danger from terrorist attack to the pipelines. There is talk of the U.K. being under-supplied with electricity as early as 2006.

The official report of energy company National Grid Transco also raises some alarming questions. It explains that the power failure that took out a large part of the U.K. capital was the combination of two separate failures occurring at the same time – something that Transco appears to believe is a very rare occurrence, as all the elements of the supply should be “redundant” or, in other words, an automatic backup should exist in the event of a failure.In last summer’s case, the first failure was a potential major component breakdown, which triggered what they call a “Buchholz Alarm.” When this happens, the system is left without backup circuits for around 10 minutes, which is considered “an acceptable risk.” It was during this period that a second fault occurred to another piece of equipment and the entire system went down.

You might say it was a case of bad luck, until you learn that there are 43,000 individual pieces of equipment such as the one in the second failure and that there are on average around 13 Buchholz Alarms each year!

For businesses across the globe, server downtime means loss of transactions, loss of revenue, potential legal implications (e.g., online trading), data corruption, and, ultimately, loss of customers.

If a customer goes to your Website and it is down, he will usually go to the next one that is working. The other problem is that even if the power drops for a second, it could take your server hours to reboot and successfully restore the data to the point at which the interruption occurred.

So what can be done? Well, businesses need to take this issue seriously. If it is just a single device, a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) will give some autonomy for a limited period. But if more equipment, or large data systems, are being used, then diverse power supplies from opposite sides of the city would help, and local generators would be a major benefit.Of course, a second generator would be ideal, just in case the first doesn’t work, and then perhaps a large diesel store to keep them running for 72 hours or so, and you would need a guaranteed delivery agreement to keep it topped up.

There are, of course, easier ways, which are cheaper and more efficient. The primary option is to outsource the housing of your equipment to one of the main collocation companies, which provide areas in buildings that have been designed with all these safety features already incorporated.

This is a problem that is getting more and more acute with consumption of electricity rising every year. As technology becomes ever more critical for our businesses we cannot afford to ignore it. Next time you hear the diggers in the street in front of your building tearing up the road once again, remember to cross your fingers!

— Mike Tobin, Chief Executive Officer, Redbus Interhouse plc