While blackouts seem to be a thing of the past in South Africa- at least, for now –the losses suffered by business across the country remain fresh in the mind. The power crisis taught important lessons, the most important being that business –no matter how big or small –have to create an environment conducive to protecting their technology investments.

“The key to disaster recovery and business continuity today is operational resilience. In many companies, disaster recovery centers rely on backup centres for their IT business continuity. The key to disaster recovery is, however not just redundancy; the resilience of system or the network is critical.

Public utilities are not required to provide computer- grade power- and they don’t. IT equipment is damaged by subtle anomalies that users never see, such as sags, surges, spikes, brownouts, line noise, frequency variation, switching transients harmonic distortion.

“Power problems are equal- opportunity threats. They hit small businesses as often as big ones, regardless of the size of the infrastructure; these systems are a significant company asset that deserves adequate protection. A sound power protection strategy is cost-effective,”

Not only will a power protection strategy mitigate risks, the implementation of a strategy to secure an IT infrastructure can save businesses money in the long term too , look beyond generators and surge suppressors. These are band-aid solutions for systemic problems. “Uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs) go beyond these power-protection strategies while pre-senting a compelling business case in any commercial environment.” UPSs protect IT systems by conditioning incoming power to smooth out the sags and spikes that are all too common, providing ride-through power to cover for sags or short-term outages by selectively drawing power from batteries, backup generaters and other available sources. Whatever the application, there’s a UPS configuration available to provide the required performance and features, at a price point to suit all budgets.

How does a business decide on the type of UPS and power protection strategy appropriate for its needs? Businesses of all size can take 10 proactive steps to create a secure environment for IT:

* Don’t assume your business is too small for protective measures
* Treat any IT equipment location as a data centre
* Beware of hidden threats in apparently “healthy” power
* Determine the level of power protection you need
* Provide for Backup power during utility outages
* Protect IT equipment form over heating
* Protect IT equipment from unauthorized access
* Manage cables for efficiency and air flow
* Protect IT equipment from the environmental hazards
* Proactively monitor the operating environment.

With judicious decisions about cooling systems, environmental control, power protection, cable management and monitoring systems- integrated into a well- configured rack of enclosure- you can reduce costs and downtime while resolving the most common threats to IT systems.

But remember to incorporate resilience into the technology at the design stage to ensure continuity, even during extended power surges. To achieve a high level of resilience with a UPS system, units with dual conversion design must be used. In this way, the critical IT load is protected against any power quality issues at the input of the UPS system; units with dual conversion design must be used. In this way, the critical IT load is protected against any power quality issues at the input of the UPS, whether it is voltage or frequency related. It is important to note that some rotary UPSes and static UPSes may not be dual conversion design.

For large data center it is worth using 10-year design life batteries. It is also necessary to install a battery monitoring system that is based on impedance check technology. However, it very likely that in few years time, battery banks will be replaced with fuel cell technology. Battery autonomy can be based on requirements set by the client, but 10-15 minutes is the common figure found in this type of industry. Standby generation is also essential for long outages and also to support non-essential loads, like air conditioning, lighting, and so on.

It is good to have generator sets that have excellent compatibility with leading power factors imposed by these servers. This will provide added resilience in the event of the entire UPS systems going into by pass mode during a main’s loss situation. Since most of the IT loads generate harmonics, it is good practice to limit propagation of such pollution by using active harmonic filters. “Every business interruption strains business operation and can temporarily throws an organization into chaos,”

It remains good practice to evaluate the power quality status of business, to know what is at risk and to take the necessary steps to keep your business going during a power cut or any other unexpected scenario.