According to recent reports, the UK government is having a talk with the data centre over blackouts. The government wants its infrastructure to keep functioning even if there are power shortages. Learn more about this news by reading the entire article.
About the power issue
“There’s a potential issue with energy supplies or gas supply to power stations, which will then have a knock-on impact on not just the data center providers, but will also take out power in mobile networks as well,” Gartner senior director analyst Tiny Haynes said.”The best practice is to test generators once a week, but that’s just a generator test. They’re often not doing a full load test, a failover of all systems test,” he said.
“Operators need to test all the switchgear, that all of UPS systems work, all the generators spin up, that they have adequate diesel supply,” Haynes added.”My concern would be if you want to resupply, let’s say Docklands where you’ve got a large build-up of data centers. I mean, you’ve got Sovereign House, you’ve got Global Switch, you’ve got Telehouse, and you’re going to have a huge demand for fuel to be shipped into that area. Is there sufficient capacity?”It’s usually service credits for outage, but if you’re running a Tier 3 data center, you need to be providing at least a 99.982 percent availability, and that is minutes per month, so if you go down for a few hours, then it’s going to get very expensive very quickly,” he said
source- en.wikipedia.org
Datacenters reponse
According to various reports, the data centers were asked if they have done anything or if they have any strategy for making sure about the uptime in the winter season, but surprisingly all the data centers were unwilling to talk about this topic. One company that did respond is Amazon Web Services, which said that “AWS continuously monitors and manages our datacenter facilities worldwide. Each of our facilities has contingency plans and we ensure that each of our facilities performs continuous readiness checks. For example, we monitor and test for proper configuration of our electrical distribution systems, the health of our generators, fuel quantity on-hand, and readiness of additional fuel supply.” AWS insisted that: “This issue does not pose a risk to AWS services at this time. We work closely with utility providers in each region to identify and review risks to utility supply, and coordinate any AWS response to a utility risk or request should the need arise.”