Eliminate Data Center Downtime through “What If” Simulation

Posted on August 22, 2017August 22, 2017 by Diversitec

How vulnerable is your data center to system failure? Are you able to access how resilient your data center is by knowing how many single points of failure you have or identify your weakest links? In today’s digital lifestyle of always-on and fully connected, the costs of data center downtime is measured both financially and in the impact to a company’s reputation. According to the Uptime Institute’s seventh annual Data Center Industry Survey, downtime matters with more than 90 percent of data center and IT professionals believing that their corporate management is more concerned about outages now than they were just 12 months ago. However, only 60 percent report that they measure the cost of downtime as a business metric.

Having significant hardware redundancy, a backup for the backup for literally everything could make a data center more resilient. However, this is not a good strategy for a company’s bottom line especially in light of the exponential growth of data from IoT. Thus, means for eliminating or mitigating downtime to non-harmful levels should be top of mind for IT management. One such way is to allow facilities managers to experiment in safe offline environments by creating virtual prototypes to troubleshoot “what-if” simulations for potential risks associated with power failure or critical systems going offline. Read full article here.

Reducing Data Center Damage Due to Earthquakes

Posted on July 11, 2017July 11, 2017 by Diversitec

Whether your data center is located in a high risk seismic activity area or not, earthquake damage can be devastating to an unprotected facility. Somewhere in the world, earthquakes are always happening. Magnitude 2 or smaller earthquakes are taking place several hundred times a day across the globe. According to the USGS , it is estimated that there are 500,000 detectable earthquakes in the world each year. 100,000 of those can be felt, and 100 of them cause damage with possibly more damage done by a resulting fire than by the earthquake itself. Taking into account seismic activity should be a part of your organization’s business continuity and disaster recovery planning in the event of an earthquake.

Edge Mission Critical Systems specializes in providing you with the best in class modular systems that form the backbone of data centers and critical backup infrastructure. We incorporate various proprietary processes to ensure our structures will endure the most vicious environmental conditions, anywhere in the world, without compromising structural integrity. Our turnkey modular data solution product, Binary Bunker, is Seismic rated – Zone 4, UL752 Ballistic Rated (Level 8), 200+ MPH wind rating, Fire resistant – 2+ hour, Floor loading -250 lbs/sq. ft., Roof loading – 100 lbs/sq. ft. and Thermal – 0.08 Btu/F or less. Contact us today for more information in mitigating data center damage from earthquakes or other natural disasters.

Strategies for Avoiding IT Burnout in a World of Continuous Delivery

Posted on July 6, 2017July 6, 2017 by Diversitec

Our always connected world of today is overloading IT operations teams and putting them at danger for burnout. Tech engineers and developers take a heavy personal toll from constantly fighting fires and dealing with application casualties to the point where alert fatigue sets in and best practices within the organization can be overlooked. In order to keep critical systems up and running at all times, on-call IT support staff are especially vulnerable to the stress of late night wake up calls to deal with temperamental infrastructure, false alarms or poorly designed applications. However, strategies can be put into place for improving conditions to lower the risk of employee burnout while also achieving better business results.

Implementing a robust suite of monitoring tools is a good place to start. However, narrowly focused tools will only provide partial answers when it comes to addressing complex problems. Upper management needs to be aware of the people cost associated with a support team’s stressful on-call rotation schedule. The high cost of turnover is real, not to mention the business impact on revenue, profits and customer satisfaction. For a closer look at actionable steps that can be put into place for better work life balance for on-call IT employees, read full article here.