Schneider Electric, a Global contractor, has done a comprehensive study to determine the reasons for the failure power and cooling infrastructure. Many of these systems, even ones installed by Schneider Electric, fail for the following reasons:
- Natural disasters
- Overloads
- Humidity
- Aging
According to their 2010 study conducted jointly with Hartford Steam Boiler Insurance, they discovered that 77% of power and cooling infrastructure are actually attributed to maintenance-related issues. More specifically, the biggest cause of electrical outages is, not surprisingly, the lack of maintenance.
This calls into question the Power Infrastructure Service Plan that the Data Center Manager and his IT Administrators, Technicians and Engineers need to have in place should disaster strike and cause a prolonged and failure of their power and cooling infrastructure.
Power Infrastructure Service Plan – Minimize downtime by having Schneider Electric on call
A 2013 White Paper by Duke University electrical engineer Paul Westray concludes a lack of a structured Power Infrastructure Service Plan causes equiptment failures. He also pointed out that having a good Power Infrastructure Service Plan can reduce the failure power and cooling infrastructure by up to 66%.
To this end, they’ve laid out three (3) specific ways a Power Infrastructure Service Plan can benefit an Enterprise or Corporate Data Center:
- A service plan reduces the chances of unscheduled power outages
- A service plan can avoid financial disaster
- A service plan provides the expertise needed
The cost of an unplanned power outage caused by the reasons mentioned above can be very costly. One way that they can handle the cost of a Power Infrastructure Service Plan is to allocate a fixed cost to the preventative maintenance plan.
Despite having tight budgets, IT departments need to set aside funds to implement a Power Infrastructure Service Plan and may require reallocation of funds from less mission-critical systems toward such a program of preventative maintenance.
Trained Data Center and IT professionals working on computing hardware and software are often tied up in the day-to-day running of the e Data Center. A sudden power outage caused by any of the reasons mentioned above would be magnified by a lack of a Power Infrastructure Service Plan.
These IT professionals would have to temporarily abandon their normal responsibilities and would be thrust into areas unrelated to IT and dealing with Power and Maintenance with which they are unfamiliar.
By having a Power Infrastructure Service Plan, it avails the Corporate and Enterprise with experienced power and cooling equipment field service engineers, such as those from Schneider Electric, who will know what to do when disaster strikes and get you back on your feet with minimum downtime.