In Uptime Institute’s recent report on preparing for the extreme effects of climate change (The gathering storm: Climate change and data center resiliency), there were over a dozen references to the dangers of extremely hot weather, which can overwhe...
Power failures have always been one of the top causes of serious IT service outages. The loss of power to a data center can be devastating, and its consequences have fully justified the huge expense and effort that go into preventing such events. But...
Through 2021 and beyond, the world will begin to recover from its acute crisis — COVID-19 — and will turn its attention to other matters. Few if any of these issues will be as important as climate change, a chronic condition that will become more pre...
Following a scramble to effectively staff data centers during a pandemic, many wary managers are beginning to see remote monitoring and automation systems in a more positive light, including those driven by AI. The reasoning is clear. Against a backg...
Outsourcing the requirement to own and operate data center capacity is the cornerstone of many digital transformation strategies, with almost every large enterprise spreading their workloads across their own data centers, colocation sites and public ...
What we can expect for mission-critical digital infrastructure in 2021? Each autumn Uptime Institute, like many other organizations, puts together a list of some of the big trends and themes for the year ahead. This time, we have focused on five big ...
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused concerns about data center HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) filtration. Many data center operators are adjusting filtration protocols, including upgrading to finer MERV (minimum efficiency reporting va...
There are few organizations that have had as big an impact on data center design as ASHRAE — and specifically, their Technical Committee (TC) 9.9. ASHRAE’s 2004 publication Thermal guidelines for Data Processing Environments described the optimal env...
When the PUE (power usage effectiveness) metric was first discussed at a meeting of The Green Grid in Santa Clara, back in 2007, a microphone stand was placed in each aisle of the auditorium. The importance of the initiative was understood even then:...
It has long been said that enterprises in the US have a different attitude to their use of technology than their counterparts elsewhere. True or not, a recurring narrative is that the US is technologically more bold — more ambitious, more free spendi...
When Uptime Institute recently asked over 300 data center managers how the pandemic would change their operations, one answer stood out: Two-thirds expect to increase the resiliency of their core data center(s) in the years ahead. Many said they expe...
As discussed in Note #71 (In thunder, lightning, or in rain?), climate change requires data center managers to not only review existing emergency plans but also anticipate previously unforeseen challenges. For any organization, the health and safety ...
Data centers are built and sited to withstand all that Mother Nature can throw at them — or at least, is likely to throw at them — during their lifecycle. This has long been a given, practiced and understood by designers, planners and regulators. But...
As the COVID-19 pandemic has unfolded, many people have suggested that the business case for enterprises to move more workloads to the public cloud has been strengthened. Some have argued that the pandemic will accelerate the decline of the enterpris...
Data center managers, on both the facilities and the IT side of operations, are known for their preparedness. Even so, the pandemic caught most by surprise. Few had an effective pandemic plan in place, and most had to react and adapt on the fly, as b...
Andy Lawrence
Intelligence Team
Todd Traver
Chris Brown