Hard to Find Good Reason for Poor Power ProtectionHard to Find Good Reason for Poor Power Protection

A cavalier attitude toward adequate power protection not only is unwise but also unnecessary.

When IT organizations can't afford adequate power protection, they often think it's OK to go without -- but it's not.

Some IT professionals shrug off inadequate power protection as unnecessary with the attitude, “If the power didn’t go off, then what’s the problem?” Others subscribe to the idea that it's of little consequence should power protection fail because insurance will cover the losses. While this may or may not be true, it misses the point. Power failure carries other costs, such as risk of lost customers, business disruption, and increased insurance rates.

Even worse is the idea that adequate power protection isn't affordable for some organizations. This thinking follows the adage: Pay me now or pay me later. This is the idea that either you pay now -- upfront costs -- or, because you didn’t buy adequate power protection, pay over and over again on an ongoing basis that will drain money and other resources.

Power at the Panel
Ideally, you would deploy protection not just on IT electrical panels but on all the electrical panels. Whole panel protection protects IT assets as well as anything electrically powered. The concept is to protect all electrical assets and reduce the replacement and lower the failure rate of gear.

Replacement indicates disruption and carries a cost. Less disruptive electrical influence will help preserve, and maybe even extend, asset life cycles. Whole panel protection is an excellent hedge against many kinds of internal and external electrical disruptions, and can serve as blanket protection against electrical damage.

UPS to the Rescue
If tight budgets prohibit the spend on infrastructure improvements and whole panel protection is not feasible, other IT gear improvements can help.

For example, the uninterruptible power supply (UPS) is always a good tool to provide continuous and uninterrupted power to gear. I prefer using true sine wave vs. simulated sine wave because some gear ends up needing rebooting. Some telephony systems simply don’t work on simulated sine wave (I can name at least one, the Nortel Norstar -- and, yes, many of these systems still exist).

The other UPS feature that I like is dual conversion, which is a good bet against catastrophic power events. The UPS, in a way, sacrifices itself to safeguard connected gear. While I’ve lost UPSes with dual conversion, connected gear has remained intact and undamaged -- and replacing a dual-conversion UPS is easier than replacing or restoring a rack of IT gear.

You can also add more protection by using power distribution units (PDU) with surge protection device (SPD) ratings. The PDU or SPD sits between the UPS and the gear it is powering. The Racmax product line from ITW Linx is one of many examples.

Another hedge is using managed LAN switches with built-in power protection on the ports. I recently deployed the Adtran Netvanta 1550 units for the reasons I’ve stated above. My goal was to minimize power disruption on the network with hopes that the organization can eventually deploy whole panel protection.

Electrical protection can be challenging but it doesn’t need to be paralyzing to businesses since many issues can be avoided with some investment in infrastructure that will pay off over and over again. Placing electrical protection in the right places is akin to good marketing.

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