Outages caused by IT equipment failures are the most expensive incidents to fix, at $995 per interruption

Feb 18, 2016 12:14 GMT  ·  By

The cost of data center outages has gone up compared to 2010 and 2013, a bi-yearly study from the Ponemon Institute and sponsored by Emerson Network Power reveals.

Including data from a representative sample of 63 data centers from across the US, the study shows that the average cost of a data center outage increased from $505,502 in 2010, to $690,204 in 2013, and to $740,357 in 2015. That's a 7% rise compared to 2013, and a 38% increase compared to 2010.

The study only included unplanned outages, meaning planned maintenance operations were not included in sample data.

The researchers considered costs and expenses related to damages to equipment or other assets, legal and regulatory procedures, the downtime impact on the company's day-to-day productivity, and the price paid to detect and remediate the outage.

On top of these, costs were also considered the diminishment of the company's marketplace value, loss of reputation and brand image, and loss of confidence amongst partners and stakeholders.

Data centers lose $8,851 per each minute of unplanned downtime

The total cost per minute of an unplanned outage was of $8,851 in 2015, while in the previous two years, this was $7,908 and $5,617 respectively.

At fault for most data outages was faulty UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) equipment, which accounted for 25% of all incidents. Faulty UPS devices were also the top cause of unplanned data center downtime in 2013 and 2010 as well.

Close behind were DDoS attacks, accounting for 22%, steadily growing in the past years after they accounted for 18% of outages in 2013, and only 4% in 2010.

Other data center outages were also caused by accidental or human errors, water, heat or CRAC failures, weather-related incidents, IT equipment failures (HDD, CPU, etc.) and generator failures.

As for the most costly of these, the study revealed that IT equipment failures cost around $995 to fix, followed by DDoS attacks with $981, and at a long distance by UPS failures that cost on average $709 to fix per incident.

Total cost by primary root causes of unplanned outages
Total cost by primary root causes of unplanned outages

Data center outages report (6 Images)

22% of all data center outages were caused by DDoS attacks
Total cost by primary root causes of unplanned outagesRoot causes of unplanned outages
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