Question

A data center is designed to withstand every conceivable threat, whether internal or external, which include

Natural disasters, Power outage

Hardware failure

Make a search on how to ensure all areas of the data center remain protected. Content of the research must cover the following areas

Unauthorized Access - Can unauthorized people enter the data center?

Power Supply - What happens when the power goes out?

Hardware - If the servers fail, is the data still secure?

Fire Protection - If a fire should break out, who responds?

Building - What happens if there is a natural disaster?

Data Privacy - Is data protection guaranteed?

Backup - How can you recover data?

Answer 1

All data centers have complex energy needs and time to market is crucial. That’s why our staff are focused on designing modular and scalable solutions and custom-fitting these to your needs. This way, we can deliver sophisticated power solutions and realize a fast build whatever the circumstances. Thousands of MTU Onsite Energy genset installations provide peace of mind all around the world.

There are a few natural threats that could potentially impact a data center, some more common than others:

Water Damage (Flooding, Hurricanes): This should come as no surprise—water and hardware don’t go well together. If placed within a flood zone, your data center is susceptible to damage and downtime in the event of a flood or hurricane. And even if your data center is ‘above’ a flood zone, it could potentially be out of reach of maintenance and emergency vehicles to get things back up and running.

Temperature and Humidity: The kind of hardware you find in a data center is also extremely sensitive to high temperature and humidity. If your data center is ill-equipped to provide proper cooling and air regulation, instances of high heat and humidity could potentially cause problems.

security standard, and that means solid building construction, adequate climate control, protection from intruders, and emergency preparedness to help mitigate the risks brought about by natural disasters. Our data centers mimic fortresses to ensure that your equipment remains secure and your data free from compromise, even in the face of powerful natural threats.

Natural disaster recovery is the process of recovering data and resuming business operations following a natural disaster. Natural disasters include hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and other severe storms that can impact a data center and cause data loss.

Types of natural disasters

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are 11 primary natural disasters: earthquakes, landslides/mudslides, volcanic eruptions, lightning, wildfires, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, extreme heat and extreme winter weather. All of these disasters could damage or destroy a data center, and many could render the data center unsafe for employees to enter.

Unauthorized access:

Logical access control is one of the safeguards used to prevent unauthorized access to an organization’s sensitive or critical information and to minimize the impact to an organization from security breaches. Not only can it control who or what is to have access to a specific system resource, but also the type of permitted access. This control can be incorporated into software such as operating systems, data base management systems, applications or implemented into external devices such as routers. Effective logical access control starts with defining system-specific security policies that clearly and concisely state what protection mechanisms are to be enforced in order to achieve security requirements for a system. Thus the security policies are formalized by security models and implemented by security mechanisms providing access controls that minimize both internal and external threats.

Power supply: Whether from a storm or another occurrence that knocks out power, data centers not properly equipped with backup equipment and generators are vulnerable to power outages. Data centers thrive off of connectivity and power, so power outages pose a big threat if your data center is not properly prepared.

Large companies cannot function long without the use of items such as computers, manufacturing equipment, and lights. Companies that rely on networks and web-based technologies may experience setbacks in the event of an outage. Power outages can affect your business in a variety of ways. Each way can have an impact on the bottom line of your business and your productivity:

Lost Customers and Revenue: When power outages occur, sites may go down and result in lost customers and lost revenue. When customers can’t access your website, they may have no way to purchase products. This one-time power outage could impact how they perceive your company. A damaged reputation can have long-term effects on your revenue. Gaining these customers back might require significant marketing efforts, which can be costly.

Unturned Inventory: Inventory turnover refers to the number of times a company’s inventory is sold or replaced during a specific period of time. If you experience downtime due to an outage, the speed at which you sell your inventory will decrease. If customers aren’t able to make purchases, your unturned inventory will increase.

Decreased Employee Productivity: Downtime as a result of power outages has an impact on employee productivity. Employees may not be able to complete their tasks when key equipment is down. Also, IT employees may need to work overtime to resolve problems or professionals may need to be hired to help recover lost data and get systems running again. Depending on the duration of the power outage, lower employee productivity can have a huge effect on your businesses bottom line.

Stored Computer Data Lost: Power outages are one of the top reasons data loss occurs. Because computers and operating systems are complex, they need to shut down properly. An outage causes computers to shut down unexpectedly. Any files you were working on could be lost or become corrupted. If power outages occur frequently, they can damage your hard drive and reduce its lifespan.

Damaged Equipment: Power outages can cause long-term damage to your equipment. The greatest cause of equipment damage from power outages is the electrical surges that occur when the power is restored. Not having a proper backup power supply or not implementing protection from surges can cause your equipment to become damaged when the power comes back online. Also, the cost to repair equipment is an unanticipated expense that could set you back.

Hardware:

Hardware failures have a big impact on the dependability of large-scale data centers. We present studies on over 290,000 hardware failure reports collected over the past four years from dozens of data centers with hundreds of thousands of servers. We examine the dataset statistically to discover failure characteristics along the temporal, spatial, product line and component dimensions. We specifically focus on the correlations among different failures, including batch and repeating failures, as well as the human operators’ response to the failures. We reconfirm or extend findings from previous studies. We also find many new failure and recovery patterns that are the undesirable by-product of the state-of-the-art data center hardware and software design.

Fire protection: Finally, in very rare instances, fire can be an issue. Again, if not properly equipped, fire can spread throughout a data center and cause irreversible damage to storage space.

Immediately pull the nearest fire alarm pull station as you exit the building.

When evacuating the building, be sure to feel doors for heat before opening them to be sure there is no fire danger on the other side.

If there is smoke in the air, stay low to the ground, especially your head, to reduce inhalation exposure. Keep on hand on the wall to prevent disorientation and crawl to the nearest exit.

Once away and clear from danger, call your report contact and inform them of the fire.

Go to your refuge area and await further instructions from emergency personnel

In order to ensure that the proper authorities are notified of a fire, when the opportunity arises once you are safe from imminent danger, call any of the following:

Emergency Notification System	911
UA Police Department	569-3400
Environmental Health & Safety	371-7602 (7:30a.m.-4:30p.m.)
East Hall Reception Desk	570-5101 or 570-5102

Buildings: No one expects to be caught in a potentially dangerous and extreme situation such as a natural disaster. If the unthinkable does occur, having a plan and knowing what to do could make all the difference for you and your loved ones. These four tips can help you stay safe during a disaster.

If you have not been ordered to evacuate, stay in a safe area or shelter during a natural disaster. In your home, a safe area may be a ground floor interior room, closet or bathroom. Be sure you have access to your survival kit in case you are in an emergency event that lasts several days.

Listen to your portable radio for important updates and instructions from local authorities. Remember to have a battery-powered radio in your survival kit. Some radios are now equipped with multiple power sources, such as batteries, solar panels and a hand crank.

If power is lost, use a generator with caution. Make sure conditions are safe before operating a portable generator. Only operate it outside away from windows, doors or vents. Follow all manufacturer’s instructions.

Stay in your safe area and do not drive until the danger has passed. Resist the temptation to check on your property until you are sure it is safe to do so.

"There are counties in California where it makes economic sense to make buildings three times as strong and stiff as code requires and the benefit cost ratio could reach 8-to-1," said Porter.

In several Colorado counties in the wildland-urban interface, requiring builders to adopt the International Wildland-Urban Interface Code, which requires things like fire-proof roofing materials, could save $3 for every $1 spent.

Porter hopes the study will encourage lawmakers to invest more in hazard mitigation. Future studies will explore what society can do to incentivize builders to do the same.

"This past year was the costliest ever in the United States in terms of recorded disaster losses," said Peek. "This report charts a clear path forward, illustrating that investments that we make before disaster strikes can help reduce the harm and suffering caused by these events."

Data privacy:

We guarantee that all of your data is stored in secure facilities housed in data centers that have been certified by the International Organization for Standardization. Our servers are located in Germany and your data privacy is governed by German data protection laws - which are amongest the strictest in the world.

This means that we adhere - by law - to a strict need-to-know policy: all members of our staff only get clearance to systems and data they absolutely need to access. In addition to that, all our employees and partners are contractually bound and regularly educated about data privacy and protection.

We will never sell, rent or otherwise distribute the information that you or your users share with us without your explicit permission unless we are required to do so under applicable law.

If someone can steal personal data, its privacy is not guaranteed, which puts you at risk for identity theft and other personal security breaches. But the opposite relationship isn't always true: personal data can be protected while still not being reliably private.

How? When you swipe your credit card for a service provider, you're doing two things. First of all, you're trusting the service provider and payment system with your personal data protection — to make sure, among other things, shady cybercriminals and other third parties can't access your credit information without your consent. But you're also trusting them to honor your data privacy by not misusing the information even though you provided it to them.

The point is technology alone cannot ensure the privacy of personal data. Most privacy protection protocols are still vulnerable to authorized individuals who might access the data. The burden on these authorized individuals is, above all, about privacy law, not technology.

Backup :

The network disaster recovery plan doesn't exist in a vacuum, but rather is part of an organization's broader IT disaster recovery plan. Data backup is a key part of both the overall IT plan and the network plan, and information on an organization's backup policies and procedures should be included in DR planning.

Cloud backup and cloud-based disaster recovery are other options, either in-house or through a cloud data backup service. Cloud storage as a service provides low-cost, scalable capacity and eliminates the need to buy and maintain backup hardware. However, cloud providers fees vary depending on the types of services and accessibility required. And cloud services can require organizations to encrypt data and take other steps to secure the information they're sending to the cloud.

Cloud-to-cloud data backup is an emerging alternative. It uses software as a service (SaaS) platforms, such as Salesforce and Microsoft Office 365, to protect data. This data often exists only in the cloud. Backed up SaaS data is copied to another cloud from where it can be restored in an emergency.