When the great summer slowdown begins, the holiday mood takes over for many and attention turns to summer escapes. But the summer break isn’t always the most relaxing time for IT teams who can’t shed the fear that a major IT incident may occur during their absence – nothing takes the sheen off a day at the beach like the simmering dread of calls from beleaguered colleagues and clients announcing service disruption and the need for urgent action.
Datum doesn’t go on holiday – reliability and resilience all year round
Posted on in Blog
Summertime, and the living is easy ....?
Relax ... we've got your back
Risks to critical IT real estate come in many forms; from physical or cyber security breaches and hardware or software failure, to natural disasters, but some risks are particularly prevalent during the summer. Thankfully, IT leads who have partnered with Datum can rest easy knowing that equipment and workloads are as well looked after at this time of the year as at any other.
Summer – a wolf in sheep’s clothing?
Most of us look forward to summer with eager anticipation after the dark and cold that preceded it. But our changing climate means that summer can bring so much more than longer days and clement weather – it increasingly means periods of excessive heat, followed by storms and heavy rainfall. This is problematic for IT facilities, which are very sensitive to heat and moisture.
A new record-high temperature for the UK of 40.3ºC was recorded at Coningsby in Lincolnshire on the 19 July 2022, and hot weather events are associated with lightning strikes during and flash flooding in parts of the country. A UK Climate Resilience Programme report projects that the number of extremely hot days in the UK could increase four-fold, jumping up from around 10 days per year today to 37 days. This is not great news for those involved in the storage and maintenance of business-critical IT equipment and workloads.
Power outages are particularly common during heatwaves due to summer storms and the need for cooling systems to run on overdrive to maintain the correct ambient temperature. The equipment in data centres generates a significant amount of heat, so cooling (which itself generates heat) is the life support of the data centre environment. But the combination of heat within the data centre and sky-high outdoor temperatures can cause electrical equipment to become overloaded, which is why summer constitutes ‘power outage season’.
Furthermore, torrential downpours are common following periods of hot weather, and it is no longer unusual for some areas of the country to be hit by a month’s worth of rainfall (or more) in a few hours. Flash floods are an obvious risk to any IT facility that finds itself in a vulnerable location, but water can also accumulate through condensation or humidity in warmer weather and can lead to corrosion and degradation of devices and cables.
But don’t cancel your holiday just yet - we’ve got it all in hand ….
There are so many benefits of partnering with Datum; benefits that are relevant at any time of the year, not just during the summer slow-down:
- Rigorously tested data centre infrastructure to prevent problems occurring.
- The luxury of infrastructure redundancy – power, cooling and data back-up.
- Energy efficient cooling to reduce water and power consumption.
- Resilience. Our fully 2N power and highly resilient infrastructure exceed the requirements of Tier 3 and are backed by a 100% uptime SLA – vital reassurance for clients whose businesses need to be operational 24x7x365.
- System monitoring and engineering services (including emergency response) to monitor power loads and system functionality and act quickly in case issues arise.
- Security. Our security approach and processes across our facilities have been designed to meet the requirements of industry-recognised certifications including ISO 27001, PCI DSS, BS5979, NSI Gold and Police-Assured Secure Facilities (PASF).
Talk to us
All this means that holidaying IT teams can rest assured that we have got it all in hand. To find out how you can make your summer break more relaxing next year by handing over the responsibility of your IT real estate and workloads to Datum, get in touch.