If you're working at your computer and electrical power to your office goes out, several bad things can happen.

For one thing, you could lose important data. And if the failure occurs while your system is writing data to disk, the disk's logical structure could suffer serious damage, and some files could be lost.

Even a brief power interruption (a few milliseconds) can cause problems. Longer interruptions mean more trouble. If your servers are affected, you could lose both business from customers and productivity from employees.

According to an IBM Corp. study, a workstation has more than 120 power problems per month. Power failures or surges account for 45.3 percent of all data loss, according to Contingency Planning magazine.

These conditions can be prevented by a good uninterruptible power supply (UPS) with an appropriate rating for your computer and network equipment. This can ensure clean power by correcting for sags or brownouts, spikes, surges and electrical noise.

If a blackout occurs, a UPS can page you and then automatically shut down the equipment. This transition time can ensure that you don't lose data, even that cached in memory.

Ever-slimmer rack-mounted devices

» posted by ITworld staff

Computerworld

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