The amount and severity of outages at data centres are on the decline, according to a new report.
The analysis, from resiliency think-tank the Uptime Institute, is its sixth annual report into data centre downtime and found the decline in outages was following a long-term trend.
However, the Institute warned that data centre operators should not get complacent.
The findings were compiled using a number of sources, including Uptime’s annual global survey of data centre managers, publicly available data and anonymised data from the Institute’s members and partners.
The report acknowledges that this might not still be a complete picture, as there are differences in how different organisations define outages and how much detail they record of each incident.
The overall results were said to be encouraging, however, suggesting that resilience is improving despite challenges on multiple fronts.
More than half (55%) of data centre operators who responded to the survey conducted in 2023 reported experiencing an outage over the past three years.
This was still less than the 60% who said the same in 2022 and the 69% who experienced downtime in 2021.
Only one in 10 outages considered serious or severe
Of these reported outages across 2023, only one in 10 was considered to be either serious or severe.
More than half (54%) said that severe outages cost over $100,000 (£79,000) while 16% reported that their most recent incident of downtime cost $1 million (£790,000) or more.
Respondents considered 41% of outages across the previous three years to have been negligible, representing an increase of 4% from 2022 and 10% from 2021.
Disruptions to power were named as the most common cause of impactful outages, with this being cited as the main cause by more than half (52%) of respondents.
A combination of third-party operators, telecommunications as well as cloud and internet providers were together responsible for just over two thirds (67%) of overall outages over the past eight years.
This has risen slightly (by 5%) over the past three years, representing an increasing reliance on cloud hosting, software as a service (SaaS) and colocation providers.
The report concluded by saying that, while the digital infrastructure industry is “on an improving trajectory”, the prevention of outages “requires ongoing vigilance and investment”.
This includes the maintenance of elements including robust data centre design, improved training and continuous review.
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