The data center is one of the most dynamic and critical operations in any business. Complexity and criticality have only increased in recent years as data centers experienced steady growth in capacity and density, straining resources and increasing the consequences of poor performance.The Ponemon Institute’s “2013 Cost of Data Center Outages Study,” sponsored by Emerson Network Power, revealed that the average cost for any type of data center outage is more than $690k. The average cost of a partial data center shutdown is more than $350k and of a full shutdown is staggering — more than $900K. The calculations include both direct and indirect costs, including but not limited to: lost productivity, equipment damage, cost to detect and remediate systems and core business processes, and lost confidence among key stakeholders.
Because the cost of downtime is so high, availability of IT systems is generally the most important metric on which data centers are evaluated. However, data centers today must also operate efficiently — in terms of both energy and management resources —and be flexible enough to quickly and cost-effectively adapt to changes in business strategy and computing demand. The foundation to achieve these objectives is strong data center design. The following best practices represent proven approaches to employing power and management technologies in the quest to improve overall data center performance.