Evaluating the Costs of a Data Center Outage

With nearly all of today’s critical business models relying heavily on data centers, the cost of a data center outage can be difficult to predict. However, the following areas should provide you with a clear picture as to what kind of costs may be incurred during a data center outage.

Detection cost

This is the cost that is associated with discovery of the fault, and the subsequent investigations to unravel the true cause of the failure.

Cost of containing the defect

The fault that is discovered should not be allowed to have a domino effect. In other words, it should be contained, and not allowed to spread to other key modules or components. This cost is important to prevent the outage from causing further damage.

Equipment cost

If there has been a mechanical failure in the hardware facility of the data center, then equipment needs to be replaced at any cost to quickly restore the service.

Loss of productivity costs

The disruption of services due to the data center outage would result in lower productivity, and in extreme cases, no productivity. This is one of the most common costs associated with an outage, but it is also one of the more difficult costs to calculate.

Revenue Loss of clients

Disruption of service would prevent customers from accessing core business functionality thereby leading to revenue losses on a large scale.

Recovery costs

The cost of hiring personnel for both hardware and software, for the purpose of recovery requires a hefty investment. Besides if third party personnel are employed to audit and manage the cost of recovery, then it adds to the recovery bill.

So the cost of a data center outage is not necessarily clear-cut or simple. The above list of costs provides a clearer picture into the type of costs you may have to incur. Hence an outage is something that has to be attended to with great care, and rectified as fast as possible.

Alex Carroll

Managing Member at Lifeline Data Centers

Alex, co-owner, is responsible for all real estate, construction and mission critical facilities: hardened buildings, power systems, cooling systems, fire suppression, and environmentals. Alex also manages relationships with the telecommunications providers and has an extensive background in IT infrastructure support, database administration and software design and development. Alex architected Lifeline’s proprietary GRCA system and is hands-on every day in the data center.