Ensono data center readies for Hurricane Florence
Hurricane Florence made landfall Friday morning in North Carolina, but data centers will continue to operate, including the Ensono data center in Kings Mountain.
Kings Mountain, in the Charlotte metro area, is well inland, but the region is still expected to see high winds, more than 10 inches of rain and the potential for tornadoes. Hurricane Florence was classed as a Category 1 hurricane as of Friday morning.
Power outages are the key threat to IT equipment, and already more than 400,000 homes and businesses are without electricity in the Carolinas. Jim Kozlowski, vice president of global data center operations at Ensono, said the company’s mission-critical data center’s electrical systems, cooling systems and backup diesel generators operate with many layers of redundancy. Ensono is a managed services and cloud services provider.
“The center is designed to operate continuously even without public utility power into the site,” he said. “The backup generators have fuel storage onsite and additional fuel deliveries on standby to provide continuous operation throughout the storm and any potential utility power loss.”
In the area of power generation, the Ensono data center in Kings Mountain has multiple backup diesel generators. The generators supporting the Ensono data center are designed and have been maintained to withstand the rain and wind associated with the storm.
Kozlowski said Ensono has tested all of the data center’s systems, noting the center’s maintenance is up-to-date to ensure backup systems are able to function as planned. The company has informed customers of the steps it has taken and continuously updates them based on weather service and utility company information.
IT services firms in areas prone to natural disasters develop emergency preparedness plans to help customers deal with the immediate crisis and its aftermath. In 2017, during a particularly busy hurricane season, SearchITChannel wrote about how one Florida MSP supported its customers through Hurricane Irma.