In 21st century power is the fourth essential to humans after Water, Air and food. Specially for data centers power is like oxygen. Power is the main factor in a colocation facility which determines 100% uptime guarantee. Any problems in power supply can harm your hardware like memory, hard drives motherboards which will result in downtime for your data center. Downtime is a like a black mark on a Data Centers profile. Many colocation facilities promise that they have the best and suitable power systems but according to a study only 5% of the total colocation services facilities in the world have right power system. Remaining 95% have some kind of problems related to power systems. Four of the most common power related problems in data centers are:
Non-redundant UPSs
During power cuts UPS are required until generator comes online. When UPS do not go online in the case of any power failure it can cost downtime. Quality of a UPS is not the only solution for this problem even best quality UPS fail sometime, its better to have multiple redundant UPS units at your colocation facility in a n+1 configuration. In easy words this explains that a UPS runs satisfactorily below capacity in order to maintain a whole unit.
Weak Power Networks
All the UPSs and Power Distribution Units (PDU) should be designed like that if power grid fails in Colocation facility they should counterbalance it. Best Colocation facilities with good quality power grids connect their customers to various grids, so that if one goes offline other starts to work. Like this networks will always work without any disruptions. Even if one goes down other will start working like that the network will never go down.
Inadequate Generator Supply
Generators act in case of power cut. To provide the sufficient power to the whole facility a generator should be 1.5 time of the total power needed by the building. Ideal colocation facilities have a backup generator, in any case if the primary generator goes down other will start working. Without proper generators and backup power supply life of colocation services at a colocation facility will suffer. Capacity and Redundancy should be described by a good power system. a good power system is the one which have both Capacity and Redundancy.
Switch Failures
Mechanical Switches are the most common switch type in data centers. These are not good circuit breakers which are used to switch power from main electricity supply to generator supply. Switches are the most common part where there are chances of any failures.
