Mission Critical - Winter 2008 - (Page 24)

Legal Perspectives BY PETER V.K. FUNK, JR. Peter Funk is a partner at Duane Morris LLP, where he practices in the area of energy law with a focus on energy generation projects. A Reliable Energy Supply is Key to Data Center Success Failure to protect against outages can have lasting financial and legal impact ata centers serve virtually every industry, either without power exacerbated such concerns. As data centers continue to proliferate, issues with energy directly or indirectly, and they are critical to the financial industries, communications and trans- supply could affect nearly every facet of our existence. portation providers, governments, military organizations, According to predictions by AFCOM, power failures and limits on availability could negatively health care, and many other sectors. affect 90 percent of commercial data Regardless of the specific application, center operations over the next five years. all data center operators must provide As data centers Further, a recent AFCOM survey found for secure storage of data and reliability continue to proliferate, that 81 percent of respondents had expein the event of interrupted or poor qualissues with energy rienced a failure in the past five years and ity power supplies. Certain data centers 20 percent experienced at least five failfocus solely upon providing continuity supply could affect ures within that same period. Of these outthrough secure remote access for businearly every facet of ages, over 80 percent were due to either ness users in the event of power outour existence external or internal power failures. ages, natural disasters, or terrorism. Within the last several years, even the Data centers typically meet these best-planned facilities have been subject requirements by a combination of backup batteries (commonly called uninterruptible power to unexpected power outages and disruptions in service. On supply or UPS devices) and on-site activation of emer- Tuesday, July 24, 2007, a data center co-location provider’s gency backup generators. Power quality is also of key facility suffered an outage of forty-five minutes when it importance for data centers. Voltage irregularities, line lost grid power and backup generators failed to start. Sevnoise, harmonic distortions, and frequency variation can eral well-known and popular websites such as Technorati, negatively affect the operation of a data center. A recent Craigslist, and Netflix were unavailable for several hours AFCOM survey found that power is the number one con- as a result. On July 30, 2006, a telecommunication hub in cern in data center management. The costs of failure can Seattle lost power for approximately 45 minutes when a be high, and substantial liabilities can arise when energy breaker that was supposed to feed backup power failed to engage. On July 24, 2006, the popular website MySpace supplies to data centers are compromised. According to the United States Department of Environ- was offline for hours due to power outages in its Los Angemental Protection (EPA), the increasing demand for com- les data center. On December 22, 1998, the data center for a puter resources in the past five years has led to an estimated distributor of microcomputer products suffered a power outdoubling of the energy used by data centers nationwide. age causing its computer system to reset to default settings. The EPA estimates that in 2006 the nation’s data centers This caused a lost connection to the distributor’s critical utilized approximately 61 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) at business application used to track customers, products, and an estimated cost of $4.5 billion. By 2011, EPA estimated, daily transactions for the greater portion of a day. The losses and liabilities a data center owner or operator energy consumption by data centers could nearly double again to more than 100 billion kWh at an estimated annual might suffer due to a power outage could be significant. cost of $7.4 billion. Such rapid growth, coupled with the Even though stored memory may be unaffected by a power aging national power grid, causes concern about the grid’s outage, reliability of operations is a major selling point for ability to provide a consistently reliable supply of energy to data centers and a key determinant of success. Data center the nation’s data centers. The 2003 Blackout of the North- operators who cannot live up to their promises in providing eastern U.S. and Canada that rendered 50 million people reliable service may lose customers due to a loss of confi- D 24 | Mission Critical Winter 2008

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Mission Critical - Winter 2008

Mission Critical - Winter 2008 Table of Contents Editorial: What Have We Been Doing? Cronin’s Workshop: Imagining the Perfect Data Center Power And Cooling Solution Digital Power: The Next Edge in Business Resiliency Zinc Whiskers: Keeping Up With The Green Movement Mission Critical Care: Shipping, Staging, and Installation Legal Perspectives: “A Reliable Energy Supply Is Key to Data Center Success” Continued Payback, Instant Protection Beyond the Nines The Green Information Technology Revolution Health Care Network Offers Glimpse of the Future of Backup Power High-Density Data Centers – Discuss, Design, Deploy High Performance Data Centers Call for Innovative Cooling Techniques More Data in the Data Center Five Considerations for Powering Data Center Racks New Products Industry News Events Classifieds Letters Ad Index Datacenter Wiki: wiki-Mission Critical

Mission Critical - Winter 2008

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