High temperature, cause of data centre failures in Nigeria

High Temperature has been rated as the major cause of data failure in Nigeria and other temperature countries.

This was the submission of the Chief Executive Officer, Capitoline, Matt Flowerday while speaking at the Data Centre training organized recently by KITS Technologies Limited and delivered by Capitoline LLP of United Kingdom in Lagos to address the challenges faced by the DC stakeholders, efficiency of Data Centres in Lagos.

According to him, in an audit of over 50 data centres within the past 2 years, Capitoline finds that running Data centre with a wider temperature / humidity ranges takes less air conditioning energy and helps to minimize energy consumption.

“Besides, among all sources of Data Centre failures, temperature tops with 55%. Moreover, 84 major data centre failures that occurred within the space of 36 months worldwide had their root cause traced too energy/power, design, specifications, processes and operating procedures”, he said.

He noted that Data Centres (DC) would shape the way IT business is conducted in the country because they are the engine rooms that run today’s Global Digital Economy. However, the energy utilization in most DC is grossly inefficient, leading to astronomical rise in temperature and eventually grounding the Data Centre.

“Virtualization in widely known to reduce servers in the Data Centre which should have ultimately served to reduce the vast amount of energy that DC consumes, but research shows otherwise. Experts says CRAC unit sizing and placement, thermal gain, heat generated by servers, racks organization are priority considerations for energy efficiency in Data Centres”, he added.

Flowerday explained that DC would achieve efficient energy utilization with adherence to international tier best practice / standards in both the design and operational management.

The Director, Business and Strategy, KITS Technologies Limited, Mr. Taofeek Okoya also disclosed that a good understanding of the design concept, strict compliance to tier standards and green agenda metrics could seriously save most Data Centres in Nigeria of these avoidable failures.

He said according to reports, major data centres experience a critical collapse and loss of availability, somewhere in the world, in every two weeks. In nearly every case, these failures are preventable with improved design and operational procedures. The training of Data Centre managers locally in Nigeria is aimed at reducing the likelihood of these mishaps in any of the Data Centres in Nigeria.