This hurricane season is bound to bring severe weather
across the United States, while the likelihood of a “Sharknado” terrorizing our
coasts is slim, power outages will certainly be a prevalent result of
unfavorable weather patterns in the 2013 hurricane season.
The SyFy
Channel summer hit begs the question, “How is turbulent weather going to
impact critical power quality?” Obviously, flying sharks won’t be threating data
this summer - unless an underwater data center is in the works. In the case of
bad weather, if you don’t have a backup power plan, here are four tips to get
you started:
- Know
your risks: Power outages are often assumed to be rare and
unlikely events but severe weather is a major threat to power systems; in
fact, all of the top five most significant outages reported in 2012 were
caused by hurricanes or severe storms. These storms affected more than 12
million people according to Eaton’s
Blackout Tracker. With this interactive site, visitors can see the
cause, duration and number of people affected by a blackout and view
causes per state or region.
- Consider
your investments: Eaton’s Blackout Tracker Annual Report
cataloged 2,808 U.S. power outages in 2012. Even a small server
configuration and local area network (LAN) represents an investment of
tens of thousands of dollars. To that, add applications, management
systems and critical databases, and it is clear that significant company
assets depend on power that is not always dependable.
- Remember,
power problems are equal-opportunity threats: Computers, servers
and networks are just as critical to a small business as a data center is
to a large enterprise. In addition to severe weather, equipment failures,
lightning, copper thieves, and even wayward snakes can cause power disruptions that have
the potential to bring business to a halt. Look beyond generators and
surge suppressors and consider an uninterruptible power system (UPS) to
keep operations moving smoothly.
- Determine
the level of power protection needed: Consider what type of UPS, best deployment strategy and how much
UPS capacity is required for your business. Then, assess how much battery
power you need to shut down systems or switch to backup generators in case
of an emergency. With adequate backup runtime, modern software solutions
can facilitate the safe movement of data to a backup site to maintain
business continuity. If an outage extends past the limits of backup
systems, power management software can orchestrate the selective,
sequential shutdown of loads.
Regardless of the weather, stay away from sharks this summer
and avoid downtime. To access the Eaton Blackout Tracker or data from the 2012
annual report, visit www.eaton.com/blackouttracker.
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