One of the most overlooked factors that has an impact on how well the network is performing is if the data center is getting enough electricity. A number of issues surrounding data centers stem from the fact that companies simply can’t get the generators they need to operate these massive data centers:
“The data center building boom has created backlogs for the large generators that provide emergency power, with some facility operators reporting lengthy delays on new units of the most popular models.
‘Generator lead time for a nice 2 megawatt diesel engine is now up to a year for one generator,’ Josh Snowhorn of Terremark said in a panel at the NANOG conference earlier this year. ‘So we can build all the raised floor we want, and then sit around and wait six months for a generator.’” [Data Center Knowledge]
The Data Center Knowledge article above points to a Slashdot poster, “Krismon,” who claims (without much verification) that the military is also using generators in the ongoing conflicts in Iraq: “…the story we got from Detroit Diesel in 2004 was that they [two megawatt units] went to the middle east for the war and we had to wait.”
On the other hand, IEEE Spectrum suggests that it’s entrepreneurs, not the military, that might be to blame:
“With electricity off in Baghdad much of the time, hundreds of entrepreneurs have rushed to fill the electrical power vacuum. They’ve set up diesel generators, and they’re providing electricity to neighborhoods during the periods when the ministry’s feeders to those neighborhoods are off. The embassy source estimates that there are some 1000 MW of connected private generation in and around Baghdad alone….It’s dirty, it’s dangerous, and it’s of dubious legality.” ["Re-engineering Iraq" by Glenn Zorpette; Spectrum.ieee.org]
As new generators are getting harder and harder to find, one would think that used or smaller generators might be employed instead., but power infrastructure demands cause data center managers to shy away from all but the latest and largest generators – furthermore, in the corporate world there’s a stigmata against buying generators used, and while having 400 5MWatt 5kWatt generators to take the place of one 2000MWatt 2MWatt generator might be fault-tolerant, you’d need a veritable army of people to maintain the group of generators.
In the mean time, companies are having to deal with significant slowdowns and other problems in the data center that affect their everyday routines, and of course the problems they’re dealing with are becoming problems for their clients, too. So what’s to be done as the generator backlog keeps new, better generators out of data centers all over the globe? Well, most don’t see a single answer:
“Unfortunately, there are about as many conflicting pieces of advice regarding things like backup and data management as there are vendors to peddle products. We wish we could give you definitive answers on exactly what works and what doesn’t, but more often than not, what works for one center might not work in another due to variances in legacy systems and plain-old differences in storage philosophies.” [Data Center Central, IT Business Edge]
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