Beyond uptime: Ensuring reliability and resiliency in data center power systems

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Data centers are the cornerstone of today’s digital infrastructure. They host essential applications, store vast amounts of data, and support a wide range of services that businesses and individuals rely on. Consequently, ensuring reliable and resilient power is critical.

This is especially true for large data centers, where every millisecond of uptime is crucial, and downtime can result in financial losses exceeding $1 million per hour. If the power fails during critical data processing, the fallout can be catastrophic – leading to significant financial losses and potentially damaging a company’s reputation. To avoid such outcomes, data center power systems must focus on reliability and resiliency, ensuring that servers remain operational, and processes continue seamlessly.

To keep the lights on, even amid challenging circumstances, we must understand the differences between reliability and resiliency and how they impact data center operations.

Reliability focuses on building robust systems that maximize uptime through immunity to downtime, while resiliency emphasizes the ability of these systems to respond and recover from disruptions and adverse conditions, such as hardware failures, natural disasters, cyber-attacks, or power outages. Reliability ensures continuous operation, while resiliency maintains business continuity. Because today’s businesses face growing demands and challenges, it’s important to understand and enhance these two critical aspects of power systems.

Let’s examine these concepts in more detail, looking at their key performance indicators (KPIs) and real-world success – illustrating how resilient, reliable power systems deliver meaningful value.

The foundation of continuous operations

Reliability is the backbone of any robust power infrastructure. It is the promise that the lights will stay on, the servers will keep humming, and the business will run smoothly without interruptions.

Strategies to improve reliability include redundancy and integrating diverse energy sources to create backup systems that can take over in case of a failure so that no single point of failure exists. This can include secondary power lines, additional transformers, or parallel generators. These distinct energy sources—gensets, solar panels, and battery storage—add another layer of security by providing alternative means of power during outages or peak demands.

In a high-demand environment like a data center, reliability is measured by KPIs such as

• Production Uptime
• Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF)
• Machine Downtime Rate.

Data centers aim for high availability, often quantified in terms of “nines” (e.g., 99.995% uptime). Achieving these reliability and availability metrics requires robust design, proactive maintenance, and continuous monitoring.

Reacting and adapting swiftly to disruptions

Resiliency focuses on how quickly and effectively a system can recover from unforeseen events to minimize the impact on operations and business continuity.

Resiliency strategies include predictive maintenance, condition-based monitoring, and remote diagnostics.

• Predictive maintenance uses data analytics to anticipate and address potential issues before they lead to system failures.
• Condition-based monitoring monitors the health and performance of equipment in real-time, helping to identify the optimal maintenance strategy and promptly alerting when intervention may be necessary.
• Remote diagnostics allow quick assessment and intervention, reducing downtime and speeding up recovery.

In data centers, resiliency is measured by KPIs such as:

• Loss of Service Costs (LOSC)
• Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF)
• Outage Count
• Machine Downtime Rate

These metrics help organizations understand their system’s ability to withstand and recover from disruptions, ensuring services remain available despite challenges.

For example, suppose a natural disaster strikes or an unexpected equipment failure happens. A resilient power system can quickly diagnose the problem, isolate the affected areas, and restore normal operations with minimal delay. This rapid response capability is crucial for maintaining critical services and avoiding significant financial losses.

The role of digitization, digitalization, and predictive analytics in reliability and resiliency

Integrating digital technologies creates a connected, intelligent network with real-time data collection and analysis capabilities. It provides insights into equipment performance and health. Predictive analytics can also use this data to anticipate potential issues and address them proactively, preventing failures before they occur.

Connected devices and IoT sensors continuously monitor various parameters of the power system. These devices collect data on temperature, humidity, vibration, and other critical factors and transmit it to centralized management systems. Algorithms can identify data patterns and predict potential failures, allowing for timely maintenance and preventing costly downtime.

Digital twins, virtual replicas of power systems, contain system architecture, asset nameplates, and datasheet information. They can be used to further enhance predictive analytics by simulating different scenarios and mitigation strategies. This helps plan and optimize maintenance schedules, improve system design, and effectively manage system expansions or enhancements. By leveraging these technologies, businesses can ensure that their power systems remain reliable and resilient, adapting quickly to disruptions and maintaining continuous operation.

Consulting services enhance system performance

Consulting services enhance the reliability and resiliency of power systems through expert insights and tailored solutions:

• Proactive consulting involves regular assessments and evaluations to identify potential issues early. This helps businesses make informed decisions about upgrades and maintenance ensuring continuous and reliable operations.
• Reactive consulting addresses issues as they arise, with quick, expert intervention to diagnose and resolve problems. This minimizes downtime and helps provide a fast return to normal operations.

In these scenarios, the consultive services leverage digital tools and real-time data to provide accurate and timely insights. Combining on-site expertise with advanced analytics allows businesses to optimize their power systems for maximum performance and resilience.

Real-world success

Compass Datacenters, recognized as one of Inc. Magazine’s 5,000 fastest-growing companies, designs and constructs data centers for some of the world’s largest hyperscalers and cloud providers. Their collaboration with Schneider Electric involves a $3 billion multi-year agreement to manufacture prefabricated modular data center solutions. This partnership ensures high availability and quick recovery from disruptions by integrating supply chains and leveraging innovative technologies. The result is scalable, reliable, and resilient data center infrastructure that meets the growing demands of AI and other technologies.

Schneider Electric’s solutions allow Compass Datacenters to rapidly deploy data centers while maintaining high reliability and resiliency standards. This approach includes advanced monitoring and management systems that enable real-time data analysis and optimized maintenance. As a result, Compass can proactively address potential issues before they impact operations, which helps ensure continuous service for its clients.

Ensuring continuous operations: A final reminder

While reliability focuses on maintaining continuous operations and minimizing downtime, it alone does not guarantee resilience. In the same way, a resilient system can adapt and recover quickly from disruptions, but without reliability, it may still face frequent interruptions. Robust power systems must integrate both concepts; digital technologies, predictive analytics, and consultative services provide the tools to balance these two critical aspects.

Ready to enhance the reliability and resiliency of your power systems? Discover how our Service Plans can help you achieve continuous, uninterrupted operations and swift recovery from disruptions, and connect with our experts today.