By Michael Zrihen, Senior Director of Marketing & Internal Operations Manager at Volico Data Centers

Data center reliability is crucial to sustaining today’s digital operations, where any amount of downtime has financial and reputational consequences. Fortunately, outages have been becoming less frequent and less severe throughout the past few years, but the consequences are still bitter when they happen. Even the shortest disruptions can cost thousands, and with the expected increase in data volumes, data center uptime will remain cardinal in enabling critical applications and services.

There can be so many causes and reasons behind a data center outage that threat mitigation has to follow a structured strategy to address them. The Uptime Institute’s Annual Outage Analysis report reveals the most crucial challenges affecting data center uptime last year, showing the areas that require the most attention from operators.

This blog dives into today’s most critical challenges of data center uptime and the best ways to mitigate the risks to deliver uninterrupted performance.

What Are the Most Prominent Threats to Data Center Uptime?

Despite their bad rep, cyber attacks and extreme weather events are NOT the topmost causes of downtime last year. Yes, these can be extremely costly unplanned events, but if we look at data center uptime specifically, there are other, more prominent causes of failure. Identifying these is crucial to preventing disruptions from happening again. Data centers are very intricate systems where many elements can become vulnerabilities. The direct cause of failure is often impossible to predict or prevent, however, the underlying causes often point to the lack of sufficient redundancy and human error. These invisible threats can set off and culminate in an outage. Knowing the root cause is important because the insight can help mitigate future risks and achieve better data center resiliency and performance.

For the past few years, power issues have consistently been the number one cause of severe outages. Power disturbances like overvoltage spikes, fluctuations, or blackouts heavily impact the hardware, causing shutdowns.

According to Uptime’s report, the next most common cause of outages is cooling failure, followed by issues connected to third-party providers and network-related problems.

Power Issues

Leading with the highest score of 52% in the Uptime Institute report, power-related issues are the most frequent hazard to data center uptime. The surge in data volumes in recent years presents the industry with challenges of increased power demand and resulting uptime risks.

Because those numbers persist, reducing the risk of power outages in data centers is one of the most important goals of data center operators today. Here are the most frequent power-related issues affecting data center uptime.

Issues With the Grid

Grid instability is one of the most frequent causes of outages. Extreme weather, storms, and lightning strikes often lead to disruptions. In these cases, data centers keep their crucial infrastructure running on backup solutions (generators and UPSs). In most cases, all is good; however, if the power grid issue persists and the data center lacks efficient redundancy, downtime is still hanging by a thread. In other cases, the outage occurs because a UPS or power generator fails to respond to a disruption. Regular testing and maintenance can mitigate these risks and ensure that the equipment the data center relies on is fully functional and ready to face a severe outage.

Power Distribution Units

PDUs are critical elements of the data center infrastructure, responsible for distributing power to multiple devices. Power outage incidents are frequently caused by issues encountered with PDUs: malfunctions, poor maintenance, or incorrect load balancing can lurk behind outages. A PDU failure can result in the inability to supply power consistently, which impacts all connected servers and network equipment.

Regular maintenance, adequate load balancing, and monitoring are non-negotiables that keep things running smoothly and without interruptions.

Power Surges

Lightning strikes, issues with power grid switching, or deficient wiring can cause overvoltage spikes. This excessive power suddenly flooding the electrical infrastructure can indeed cause severe damage and equipment failure. Using protector devices is the efficient solution to this problem: when voltage from a source rises above the allowed limit of 169 volts, the system will shut down. This allows the protection of outlets with large numbers of connected devices.

Overencumbered Circuits

Electrical circuits are designed to handle a specific load, and when this load is beyond what the circuit was designed to bear, we’re talking about an overload. Improper power distribution or underestimating power needs are frequent causes of circuit overloads. The result is overheating, followed by blowing fuses and blackouts, which can cause serious equipment damage and data corruption.

Preventative measures to avoid data center uptime threats in the form of overloaded circuits: regular and thorough maintenance, load balancing, and policies regulating power use.

Hardware/Software Failures

IT system failures have always been and will continue to count among the most common threats to data center uptime. You can’t stop equipment from failing, but you can implement solutions that help detect issues before they cause failure and, subsequently, outages. As technology evolves, real-time monitoring tools and automated failover solutions are becoming better and more reliable. These allow you to move workloads safely and quickly to a backup server in case of a crash.

Inadequate Cooling

According to Uptime’s report, cooling issues account for a significant 19 percent of outages in 2024. Drawing the consequences, competent HVAC systems and data center airflow management are just as important in maintaining data center uptime as the other elements of the physical system.

Issues Related to Third-Party Providers

According to the report, outsourcing IT infrastructure management to third-party providers can present downtime risks as well. From reported incidents, these issues account for almost 1 in 10 outages, putting third-party providers on the list of data center uptime threats. These numbers reflect the increasing reliance on cloud services before anything else.

Third-party providers, as specialists in data center operations, typically offer and deliver high uptime. Of course, there are differences from provider to provider, but generally speaking, robust infrastructure and professional staff qualified to execute data center operations are better than what most companies can achieve in-house. Of course, whether sustaining an on-premises data center is worth it depends on the resources and staff the company can allocate to IT management. And even with the resources and professionals in place, issues can still appear. What’s important, however, is to make sure that your future provider can deliver the uptime your operations require before signing a contract.

Network-Related Outages

Network-related issues have unavoidably become data center uptime saboteurs, too. Network reliability is fragile, and weak designs can become liabilities with today’s high data volume operations. Because of this, network optimization is crucial to improving network reliability. Consistent network monitoring and software-defined solutions can help with network reliability by identifying potential threats and addressing failures as soon as they appear. Additionally, built-in network redundancy can be vital in maintaining operations in case of a partial network shutdown.

Further Considerations

In addition to the direct causes of downtime described above, the human factor continues to be a leading contributor to data center outages. The errors often stem from mistakes in configuration, maintenance, or failing to follow operational procedures. Even a minor error like incorrect software updates or misconfigured systems can trigger a disruption. Employee awareness and training are essential to reduce the likelihood of outages.

To conclude, many of the threats to data center uptime are unavoidable, and some disasters are impossible to predict. However, by being prepared with a high level of redundancy, robust security, and a highly trained staff, many outages can, in fact, be avoided.