Power Redundancy
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Time
12 hours 57 minutes
Difficulty
Intermediate
CEU/CPE
13
Video Transcription
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>> As we talk about the physical elements
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of data centers that are
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necessary for effective business continuity
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and disaster recovery,
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one of the most important elements is power redundancy.
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In this lesson, we want to describe
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the important considerations when
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evaluating a Cloud provider's power redundancy.
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Talk about why power redundancy
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is the primary responsibility
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of a holding is hosting provider,
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and then help educate you about many of
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the issues and concepts regarding
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power redundancy in data centers,
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so you can identify red flags
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when presented with a hosting provider.
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In terms of the physical environment in the data center,
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the enterprise up time institute really says that
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the industry standard is five nines of availability,
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meaning that the data center is
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available 99.999 percent of the time.
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In real-world time, that translates to
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only six minutes of
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unscheduled downtime in a given year,
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that's a tall order to
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maintain and requires a lot of work.
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Power redundancy is the key need
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for Cloud-based data centers
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or any data center for that matter.
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Then the power and utilities that go
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to data centers need to be backed up,
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they need to be alternate forms
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of power to go to the data center.
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The utilities to the data-center need
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not only to power things in the data center,
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such as the HVAC and the lighting,
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but there really should be alternate power considerations
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for all of the elements themselves,
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all the racks and servers themselves need
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alternate sources of power in the event of an emergency.
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Now, one of the difficulties of
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this is the location of money data centers.
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We've talked about the difficulties
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of scouting a location in the data center,
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you want it to be close to
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effective utilities in a cost-effective manner,
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but those things are usually located near
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large population centers where there are more rules,
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regulations, land, and space.
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Well, land is more expensive and space is more limited,
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and there may be more regulations,
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so data centers often are in more remote areas,
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however, they need to ensure that they
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have adequate access to utilities.
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One of the most important aspects of preparing for
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effective power redundancy is that
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there's going to be accidental power loss,
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and there's a joke in IT that,
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people doing routine maintenance work is
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often the source of lack of availability.
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I've actually experienced this myself,
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the area where my office is located I would
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say the electricity is [inaudible] the best,
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but there are many instances,
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especially in the summer,
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when over-reliance or usage
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on the grid or maintenance results
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in lines being cut,
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which has plunged our office in darkness,
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and it gets very hot very quickly.
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All natural events can potentially cause outages,
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animals disrupting the power line or
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biting on them can cause a loss of power,
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and then not only the loss of power,
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but there can be different surges of volumes of
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electricity flowing down the lines which
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can cause disruptions they can even damage.
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However, in many systems have
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what is called conditioning,
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which helps to handle
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these surges or fluctuations in power.
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One of the important pieces of technology
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related to helping power redundancy for
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individual elements is referred to as
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uninterruptible power supply, UPS.
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These are rechargeable battery pieces where connection to
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the utilities that are enable conditioning,
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and battery support for
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individual hardware elements in
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the event of a power disruption.
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Now, although those elements may be used to
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support the individual hardware components,
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the data center as a whole should be able to switch
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from whatever its typical utility power supply
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is to a backup generator.
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A data center should have
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at least 12 hours of fuel in their generators,
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and their disaster recovery
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and business continuity process
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should name the suppliers who will
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be refilling these generators
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with fuel during that 12 hour period.
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In general, the best practices
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to have those suppliers ready,
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and anticipating at least 72 hours
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of reliance on the generator as before,
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the utilities can be
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repaired where power can
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be returned to the data center itself.
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All right, quiz question.
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How much unscheduled downtime is
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allowed by the five nines availability standard?
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Sixty minutes, 30 minutes, or six minutes.
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If you said six minutes, you're right.
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It is a really hard standard,
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it requires a lot of administrative effort to maintain,
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but it is the standard when it
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comes to data center availability.
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In summary, we talked about availability standards for
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Cloud providers that five nines standard,
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talked about the challenges of
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providing data centers with
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adequate power whether it's
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the location of the data center,
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the environmental factors.
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Then we also talked really important considerations
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regarding power redundancy.
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We talked about making sure there's
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redundant power to the data center
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itself from the utilities,
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as well as the individual hardware components
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using uninterruptible power sources.
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All right, I will see you
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in the next lesson where we continue to
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talk about redundancy with regards to data centers.
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