Data Center Handbook, 2nd Edition

7MANAGING DATA CENTER RISK

Beth Whitehead, Robert Tozer, David Cameron, and Sophia Flucker

Operational Intelligence Ltd, London, United Kingdom

7.1 INTRODUCTION

The biggest barriers to risk reduction in any system are human unawareness of risk, a lack of formal channels for knowledge transfer within the life cycle of a facility and onto other facilities, and design complexity.

There is sufficient research into the causes of failure to assert that any system with a human interface will eventually fail. In their book, Managing Risk: The Human Element, Duffey and Saull [1] found that when looking at various industries, such as nuclear, aeronautical, space, and power, 80% of failures were due to human error or the human element. Indeed, the Uptime Institute [2] report that over 70% of data center failures are caused by human error, the majority of which are due to management decisions and the remaining to operators and their lack of experience and knowledge, and complacency.

It is not, therefore, a case of eliminating failure but rather reducing the risk of failure by learning about the system and sharing that knowledge among those who are actively involved in its operation through continuous site‐specific facility‐based training. To enable this, a learning environment that addresses human unawareness at the individual and organizational level must be provided. This ensures all operators understand how the various systems work and interact and how they can be optimized. Importantly, ...