Summary
What key strategies can cut data center downtime from climate and natural catastrophes?
Conducting wide-ranging risk and resilience assessments that consider both single and multiple sites, enhancing physical infrastructure based on insight from risk analytics, developing comprehensive business continuity plus disaster recovery plans and improving inter-location communication.
What practical steps can minimize data center downtime from natural catastrophe and climate risks?
Use dampers to absorb seismic energy and seismic-rated equipment to protect servers, install fire suppression systems and flood barriers and design the facility to withstand high winds, among other options.
What are some of the key elements of robust data center business continuity and disaster recovery planning?
Building redundant infrastructure and data backups by setting up secondary data centers, maintaining a detailed inventory of all equipment and systems, outlining procedures for restoring data and applications and planning for inter-data center support.
Ensuring continuity for your data center customers demands holistic risk management defined by rigorous risk protocols and analytical insight.
In this article, we set out five actions to achieve just this by managing data center downtime due to climate and natural catastrophe risks, specifically, we recommend you:
- Carry out wide-ranging data center risk and resilience assessments
- Ensure sites can withstand major data center downtime risks
- Deploy risk analytics for efficient data center downtime and shared fate risk management
- Develop robust business continuity and disaster recovery plans
- Improve inter-location communication between data centers
Minimizing downtime starts with a nuanced and comprehensive view of the potential risks your data center faces.
Natural catastrophes
Natural disasters are rising in frequency and severity with devastating impacts. Our natural catastrophe specialists can help you quantify, mitigate and transfer your risks.
Related content
Advanced analytics can help you to understand the intensity of heat and drought now and in the future and other environmental hazards.
Crucially, you should have a plan in place for how each data center will respond to a disaster and how they will support each other if needed.
Disclaimer
WTW hopes you found the general information provided here informative and helpful. The information contained herein is not intended to constitute legal or other professional advice and should not be relied upon in lieu of consultation with your own legal advisors. In the event you would like more information regarding your insurance coverage, please do not hesitate to reach out to us. In North America, WTW offers insurance products through licensed entities, including Willis Towers Watson Northeast, Inc. (in the United States) and Willis Canada Inc. (in Canada).
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