EDITOR’S QUESTION
RESILIENCE
COULD BE
DESCRIBED AS A
DATA CENTRE’S
VULNERABILITY
TO FAILURE.
correct technical skills are in place. Once
these questions have been answered, a
business’ uptime needs become clearer.
Next is whether it makes more sense
to host the data centre internally, or
outsource it to an expert.
BRIAN SMITH, BUSINESS
UNIT MANAGER: MANAGED
DATACENTRE AND CLOUD
SOLUTIONS, DATACENTRIX
ata centre resilience is
D
being tested like never
before, particularly within
the South African context
where technology is
under immense pressure
to deliver remote working availability
due to COVID-19 restrictions, while
concurrently being faced with renewed
power interruptions in the form of the latest
bout of load-shedding.
A data centre’s resilience can be defined
as the measurement of its ability to
continue to operate despite the failure of a
component, such as its related equipment
or power grid connection, or any other
disruption. Resilience could be described
as a data centre’s vulnerability to failure.
Data centre resilience can be
considered from four aspects, namely
telecommunications (the network),
electrical (power), structural (the physical
building or room housing the data centre),
and mechanical (cooling). As prescribed
by The Uptime Institute, there are standard
data centre resilience measurements,
known as tier ratings. There are four tiers
of data centre resilience, from lowest to
highest: N, N+1, 2N and 2N+1.
Continuous resilience improvement is
a must today, with connectivity being
many a business’ life-support system.
Local C-level executives therefore have
to scrutinise their specific business
requirements when it comes to its
advancement. They must address
questions such as: how much downtime
is acceptable; how much budget can go
towards improving resilience – which
would need to take infrastructure,
maintenance costs and more into
consideration; does the cooling system
work, even if there is no power; is it
possible to generate power within the
data centre; and whether or not the
To improve resilience towards reaching
the five or six nines of availability can
be an expensive exercise within an
existing, in-house data centre, to the tune
of millions of Rands, only recoverable
over the following seven to 10 years. It
would require the right equipment, the
right staff and the right maintenance
contracts in place. Location of the data
centre is also critical, with access to more
power if needed, as well as a seamless
connection to more than one telecom
provider. Essentially, as availability is
increased, so too is the cost ratio for each
percentage point gained.
The benefits of outsourcing data
centre requirements mean that the
services partner will handle power and
connectivity requirements, ensure that
the right equipment is in place, and have
the right staff and technical expertise
on board – with uptime service level
agreements (SLAs) in place. This will not
only ease remote working requirements,
it also allows businesses to step away
from budgeting towards an OPEX
focused model.
One of the major advantages of a hosted
environment is the economies of scale;
there is a fixed investment spread over a
larger group of companies all accessing
the service, and ultimately making a high
availability, higher tiered environment
more accessible to many organisations
from a cost point of view.
www.intelligentdatacentres.com Issue 18
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