Maintaining Mission Critical Systems in a 24/7 Environment. Peter M. Curtis

1 An Overview of Reliability and Resiliency in Today’s Mission Critical Environment

       “The best way to predict your future is to create it.”

      Abraham Lincoln

1.1 Introduction

      Continuous, clean, and uninterrupted power and cooling is the lifeblood of any data center, especially one that operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Critical enterprise power is the power without which an organization would quickly be unable to achieve its business objectives. Today, more than ever, enterprises of all types and sizes are demanding 24‐hour system availability. This means enterprises must have 24‐hour power and cooling day after day, year after year. One such example is the banking and financial services industry. Business practices mandate continuous uptime for all computer and network equipment to facilitate round‐the‐clock trading and banking processes anywhere, and everywhere, from any device in the world. Banking and financial service firms are completely intolerant of unscheduled downtime, given the guaranteed loss of business that invariably results. However, providing the best equipment is not enough to ensure 24‐hour operation throughout the year. The goal is to achieve reliable 24‐hour power, cooling, and processing at all times, regardless of the technological sophistication of the equipment or the demands placed upon that equipment by the end‐user, be it business or municipality.

Today most industries are constantly expanding to meet the needs of the growing global digital economy. The industry as a whole has been innovative in the design and use of the latest technologies, driving its businesses to become increasingly digitized in this highly competitive business environment. The industry is progressively more dependent on the continuous operation of its data centers in reaction to the competitive realities of a global economy. To achieve optimum reliability when the supply and availability of power are becoming less certain is challenging to say the least. The data center of the past required only the installation of standalone protective electrical and mechanical equipment main. Data centers today operate on a much larger scale, 24/7. The proliferation of distributed systems using thousands of desktop PCs and workstations connected through LANs, WANs, WLAN, SAN, VPN, etc. simultaneously use dozens of software business applications and reporting tools, makes each building a “computer room.” These computer rooms are also known as Intermediate Distribution Frame (IDF) and Main Distribution Frame (MDF) critical spaces. As we add the total number of locations utilized by each bank all over the world utilizing the internet, we now realize the necessity of a critical infrastructure and associated benefits of uptime, and reliability.

      The reputation of Corporate America was severely harmed now almost two decades ago by a number of historically significant events: the collapse of the dot.com bubble and the high‐profile corporate scandals. These events have taken a significant toll on financial markets and have served to deflate the faith and confidence of investors. In response, governments and other global organizations enacted new or revised existing laws, policies, and regulations. In the United States, laws such as the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX), Basel II, and the U.S. Patriot Act were created. In addition to management accountability, another embedded component of SOX makes it imperative that companies not risk losing data or even risk downtime that could jeopardize accessing information in a timely fashion. These laws can actually improve business productivity and processes.

Many companies, due to lack of awareness, a misunderstanding of reliability concepts, or other factors, fail to consider installing backup equipment or design their systems with the proper levels of redundancy commensurate with