The UK is bracing itself for potential power cuts amidst the energy crisis. The boss of the National Grid John Pettigrew admitted that it’s possible for rolling power cuts (blackouts) as energy supplies run low.
Our suggestions below are just a few tips for being better prepared. No way are suggesting that a blackout will happen which will affect infrastructure and services, however keeping the current news in mind its best to be aware and be prepared for it.
Our suggestions are
- Contact your vendors and suppliers to check if this affects them, especially ISP/data center providers
- Ask them how they are prepared to face this if it affects them e.g. do they have power backup solutions which might last 3 hours?
- Ensure important files, and services if affected have a proper offsite (non UK) backup
- If systems are critical and cannot be off-line even for few hours, consider a load balancing system to another location (non UK)
- Alternatively if you are using cloud solutions like AWS you can easily select a different region for a few months
- Lastly, don’t panic! This is a national level situation and the UK is preparing for a colder winter for households as well. Unless you run an emergency or life saving service it’s ok if your application or service is offline for some time. It’s not the best situation but given the crisis, do what can be done and then brace yourself.
At sapnagroup, most of our servers are in Germany which won’t be affected by this crisis. For the few UK servers we have we are in communication with our clients and working on an acceptable solution, e.g. AWS has informed that they are prepared for this (see link below).
UKFast has given the following response
The ANS data centres incoming high voltage supplies and private networks are backed up by diesel generators and UPS systems in N+1 configuration. The UPS system are tested daily, and generators tested weekly. The data centres are designed and built to provide continual operation of all systems in the event of any interruption of grid power to the data centres.
ANS offers a 100% power uptime SLA, the back-up generators are equipped with a minimum of 72 hours of fuel reserves, ANS have supply contract agreements with 2 fuel providers with a re-fuelling SLA of less than 8 hours. Each data centre and associated ancillary services are supported by the standby generators and all critical services are supported by the UPS systems. In the unlikely event of power shortages or rolling blackouts ANS data centres will continue operation using our diesel generators which are rated for continual operation.
Related articles
- Some articles on the power blackout warnings
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11376421/National-Grid-chief-warns-potential-blackouts-winter-Met-Office-warns-colder-winter.html - Data centers in talk with UK Government
https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/18/uk_government_in_talks_with/