Lessons to be learned from Google and Oracle’s datacenter heatstroke
This year's summer heatwaves aren't just making your average Brit's life a bit miserable, it also caused problems for some cloud providers and server admins trying to keep their gear running.amid the region's strongest heatwave on record. Parts of the country even edged above 40C.
Omdia analyst Moises Levy, who has spent the better part of his career designing and consulting on datacenters, said these events underscore the importance of risk management and planning when designing and maintaining these facilities. “We design for local climatic conditions, optimizing plant selection for reliability and efficiency, both for current maximum observed, and forecast worst-case temperatures anticipated in the future,” Greg Metcalf, senior director of global design at Equinix toldThis can be as simple as spec'ing out and deploying redundant cooling plants or provisioning additional backup power.
In a heatwave, for instance, the mechanisms for starting up a facility's temperature-control equipment and regulating it on demand have to be present and operational, too, and if they aren't, well, it won't matter how much extra cooling capacity you have – it won't get used in time, or at all. This appears to have been what happened to Google and Oracle, with cooling system failures amid an overwhelming, historic heatwave. Google did not say its cooling simply couldn't mitigate the heat; it said its equipment failed to work when it was needed most.