Editor’s Note: This blog was originally published in May 2017. It was updated in June 2025 to include the latest information.
Can your company handle a power outage? If your company already has N+1 redundancy levels in place, the answer is yes. Companies without redundant power systems run the risk of not being protected in the event of a power supply outage.
You may ask, can’t a single uninterruptible power supply (UPS) do the job? UPS units provide immediate, emergency backup power to systems by supplying energy stored in batteries, supercapacitors or flywheels. However, to get true dual power (N+1) redundancy, you need your system to be plugged into two UPS units on different power distribution paths. Why? According to 2024 Uptime Institute reporting, UPS system failure continues to be a major cause of unplanned data center outages, and power remains the leading cause of impactful outages, accounting for 54% of all such events.[1]
The cost(s) of an outage
Many businesses justify not taking advantage of redundant power sources to save on costs, or point to the fact that their current systems do not have the dual connections required to support two power supplies. However, you should weigh the small cost of availability against the larger costs of a critical system outage and downtime.
According to the Uptime Intelligence Annual Outage Analysis 2025 report, more than 54% of respondents indicated that their most recent significant outage cost the organization more than $100,000, with one in five saying that it cost them upwards of $1 million.[2] These costs are made up of the activities and resources associated with:
- Problem detection and identification
- Containment of the overall impact of an outage
- System and network recovery
- System and data loss
- Business disruption and recovery
There is also the cost of lost business and revenue to consider, which could go into the tens of millions of dollars, or more.
Harness the availability that is offered to you
What’s needed for reliable system availability is dual power protection, and a reliable and resilient data center. As the industry’s largest global colocation and interconnection provider, with an industry-leading track record of >99.9999% uptime, we strive to continuously leverage artful design and innovation in our Equinix IBX® data centers to ensure the highest degree of security, reliability and efficiency.
For instance, our power systems include full UPS systems with N+1 redundancy levels or greater and backup generator systems in the event of a local utility failure. In the event of a power outage, the batteries activate immediately, followed by the generators within 8 seconds, which can power the entire data center.
We highly recommend that you consider the impact on your business and your customers when deciding whether to connect your mission-critical systems to a redundant power source. Consider the cost of a single-system failure in terms of its impact on other systems that are critical to your business and how you serve your employees, partners and customers.
In our 270 global data centers, we have seen the ramifications of not leveraging dual power redundancy, even when it was available. We encourage all our customers to take advantage of the power distribution redundancy that is built into our IBX infrastructures. Think of it as you would the care you take to regularly back up your critical systems and data. Only this time, you are proactively protecting system availability for your business and customers.
Learn how your company can protect itself from lost systems and business downtime: visit our website today.
[1] Annual outage analysis 2025, UII Keynote Report 173, Uptime Intelligence, May 2025
[2] Annual outage analysis 2025, UII Keynote Report 173, Uptime Intelligence, May 2025
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