Healthcare Design - September 2014 - 35

Redundancy: The key
to keeping the lights on
A stable power supply and a temperaturecontrolled environment are essential to maintaining a data center. In a study conducted by
the Ponemon Institute, "2013 Study on Data
Center Outages," 85 percent of 584 survey
participants reported that their organization's
data centers experienced a loss of primary
utility power in the past 24 months. Of that
85 percent, more than 90 percent reported
their organizations had an unplanned outage.
In healthcare, this downtime can mean not
only lost revenue but the inability to access
lifesaving information. Outages can occur for a
number of reasons, from weather to equipment failure or even an accidental cutting of
a power line. The key is to build in redundant
measures that can keep a data center running
in the event of a failure.
The Uptime Institute, a third-party organization focused on data center performance and
efficiency, has developed a tier classification
system that sets criteria to withstand a fault
and provides a consistent method to compare
facilities based on expected site infrastructure
performance.
The tier breakdown includes:
Tier 1: Nonredundant-This provides an
improved data center infrastructure beyond
the office setting and includes dedicated
spaces for IT systems, an uninterruptible
power supply (UPS), dedicated cooling equipment, and an engine generator to protect IT
functions from extended power outages.
Tier 2: Basic redundant-Building on
the previous tier, this facility infrastructure
includes redundant critical power and cooling
components, such as UPS modules, chillers
or pumps, or engine generators, to increase
the margin of safety against IT process
disruptions.
Tier 3: Concurrently maintainable-This
tier adds the capability of no shutdowns during equipment replacement and maintenance
with a redundant power and cooling path.
Tier 4: Fault tolerant-This level adds the
concept of fault tolerance to the site infrastructure, meaning that if/when equipment
failures or distribution path interruptions occur,
the effects are stopped before they impact the
IT operations.
For more, visit uptimeinstitute.org.

HCDmagazine.com 09.14

is whether to locate it on or off campus.
On-campus facilities are required to follow
the same building codes and regulations as
other hospital buildings, but they can utilize
existing power, network, and cooling systems.

For smaller, more regional players, the
price of entry for owning and operating a
data center can be prohibitive. Many opt
for a collocation model instead.
Off-campus options can be built to less-strict
building codes and free up real estate on tight
campuses for revenue-generating services.
However, they still need to be relatively nearby
to maintain reliable connectivity with a system's network.
Many large healthcare organizations
choose to have a network of smaller data
centers located at each hospital/medical office
building campus and link to several larger offcampus data facilities around the country. For
smaller, more regional players, however, the
price of entry for owning and operating a data
center can be prohibitive. Many are opting for
a collocation model, which involves leasing
space in someone else's data center, usually
by the cabinet (the unit housing the servers),
row, pod, or cage (a fenced-off area to secure
servers and equipment). One of the pros to
this service is that an owner provides its own
equipment and pays for processing power,
cooling, and physical security. However, as
IT needs scale up, collocation can become
space constrained and expensive, with rack
space leasing costs ranging from $1,100 to
$3,600 a month, Thompson says.
For midsize healthcare systems that need
more substantial data and processing capacity (from 1,000 to 4,000 kW), a wholesale data
center follows the same model as collocation but on a much larger scale. Wholesale
providers typically lease space in 500 kW
increments, making it more difficult for smaller
healthcare organizations to scale up from collocation or cloud storage, Thompson says.
One of the benefits of leasing from either
a collocation or wholesale company is that
the data center becomes an operational cost
rather than a capital cost since the healthcare
organization isn't spending its own capital
or borrowing money to build the facility, but
rather making monthly rent payments. "That's

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Healthcare Design - September 2014

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