Data center providers design for severe weather surge

The death toll of Hurricane Helene hadn't been fully calculated when Hurricane Milton and its spawn of tornadoes set their destructive path across the west-central coast of Florida this week, demolishing homes, tearing roofs off buildings and knocking out critical power supplies.

Data center infrastructure providers in areas prone to natural disasters such as Florida have been investing in resilient design to withstand severe weather events as they become more common. Uptime is essential for these providers as they house critical telecommunications networks and IT systems for finance, business and healthcare.

Extreme weather -- such as historic high and low temperatures, high winds, floods and forest fires -- exacerbated by climate change has been associated with data center outages during the past few years, according to the Uptime Institute's Annual Outage Analysis 2024 report. Uptime, which provides data center tier design standards and services, predicts this trend will intensify and outage risks will rise until preventative action is taken.

Nearly half of data center operators have experienced an extreme weather event that threatened their continuous operation. Just less than 10% of data center operators suffered an outage or significant service disruption due to extreme weather -- making it one of the top causes of data center disruptions, according to Uptime's research.

Uptime's surveys consistently show that disruptions to on-site power distribution are the most common cause of serious outages. "This is unsurprising, given the intolerance of IT hardware to any significant power disturbances, such as voltage fluctuations or complete loss of power that lasts more than fractions of a second," the Annual Outage Analysis stated.

More than 1 million customers remain without power a week after Hurricane Helene, primarily in the Carolinas as well as parts of Florida. Following Hurricane Milton, more than 3 million customers were without power on Oct. 10.

While the data center providers in that area who responded to this story said they maintained uptime throughout this month's hurricanes, widespread, prolonged power outages could affect data centers, even with backup power systems.

Resilient infrastructure, preparedness a must

Continuous uptime is critical for data center infrastructure providers due to the volume of businesses that require high availability of the infrastructure in those buildings, said Grace Padrón, senior director of operations at Equinix, Miami and Atlanta.

"Our International Business Exchanges serve as critical hubs connecting global markets and powering the digital economy of commerce, finance, tourism, media, healthcare and more" Padrón said.  

While outage risk factors are on the rise, Uptime's annual survey data shows that the rate of outages per facility is moving in the right direction. Although more than half (55%) of operator respondents to the 2023 Uptime Institute Data Center Survey reported having an outage in the past three years, that rate is down from 60% in 2022 and 69% in 2021. Further, only one in 10 outages in 2023 were categorized as serious or severe.

The improvement, according to Uptime research, is due to higher investments in physical infrastructure redundancy. In Uptime's Outage Analysis survey, 39% of enterprises and 35% of data center providers said they have increased power redundancy in their facilities during the past three to five years.

Indeed, providers in areas prone to hurricanes and tornadoes, such as Florida, Texas and Oklahoma, are building facilities designed to withstand the highest level of disasters.

Data center provider Tonaquint, for example, acquired the EdgeX data center in Oklahoma City in 2023 and renovated the facility to "withstand tornado-force winds up to 310 mph" and provide "100% uptime."

The Equinix data center in downtown Miami, called MI1, serves as a connection point between the U.S. and Latin America, Padrón said. Because it houses vital infrastructure, MI1 was built at a high point in Miami, 14 feet above sea level, with critical infrastructure an additional 18 feet above that, for a total of 32 feet of clearance. It also has 7-inch walls and is designed to withstand Category 5 hurricane-level winds, she said.  

The company's data centers in Miami are concurrently maintainable, supported by redundant components and multiple distribution paths that serve the critical environment. The facilities' power systems include full uninterruptible power supplies with N+1 redundancy levels or greater and backup generator systems in the event of a local utility failure, according to Padrón.

"In case of a power outage, batteries turn on immediately, followed within seconds by the generators, which can power the entire data center for several days," she said, adding that more fuel supplies would be delivered to support generators until utility power is restored.

Similarly, Flexential, a colocation provider with two data centers in Tampa, builds-in multiple layers of redundancy, including UPSes, on-site generators and advanced cooling systems. They proactively monitor and prepare facilities to minimize any disruptions, said Ryan Mallory, chief operating officer at Flexential.

"These systems ensure continuous operations even during extreme weather events like hurricanes," Mallory said.

Its Tier III and Tier IV equivalent facilities are designed with redundant power and cooling systems, seismic bracing and flood-resistant design to ensure operational continuity during natural disasters like hurricanes, he said.