Vendors Take Blame For Most Data Center Incidents 57
dcblogs writes "External forces who work on the customer's data center or supply equipment to it, including manufacturers, vendors, factory representatives, installers, integrators, and other third parties were responsible for 50% to 60% of abnormal incidents reported in a data center, according to Uptime Institute, which has been collecting data since 1994. Over the last three years, Uptime found that 34% of the abnormal incidents in 2009 were attributed to operations staff, followed by 41% in 2010, and 40% last year. Some 5% to 8% of the incidents each year were tied to things like sabotage, outside fires, other tenants in a shared facility. But when an abnormal incident leads to a major outage that causes a data center failure, internal staff gets the majority of blame. 'It's the design, manufacturing, installation processes that leave banana peels behind and the operators who slip and fall on them,' said Hank Seader, managing principal research and education at Uptime."
correlation is not causation (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure outside forces installing things are disruptive. But then are they the primary forces doing installations in general? And if that's the case, then it would be more appropriate to call them simply installation related issues... and that's both common and to be expected.
Install anything new and teething issues tend to crop up.
Blame game? (Score:3, Insightful)
It sounds like this is just some kind tool to show that "it's not our fault, really" -- but at the end of the day, aren't the internal staff responsible for managing the "outside forces" up to and including setting standards, supervision, etc?
Or is this one of those deals where so much it oursourced that it's easy for everyone to deny culpability?
Well duh, cuz they outsource everything. (Score:3, Insightful)
Corporate America loves to outsource. Not because it's efficient or cheap, but because it provides someone to blame!
Outsource the network to one firm, the generator to another, the HVAC to a third. Hire temp contract lackeys to staff the place, and rent-a-cops to "guard" it. Then, when something goes wrong, blame them. If it's a big enough issue fire them and replace them with the next batch of people who won't be trained, won't care, and will eventually screw up.
This article isn't illuminating, it's simply restating the design parameters of the system!
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Internal staff IS to blame (Score:5, Insightful)
over worked, understaffed, added three projects this month and only closed one that was already in the works. It isn't too hard, or that it can't be done, it is also we don't have the time to do it right because we're still cleaning up the mess from the last three projects that were "critical" and were over budget and late. We'd be outsourced, but the cost of hiring outside vendor is about 10x what in house staff costs, and they would charge more for each project added.
Which is why I no longer try to do things on "low budget" and why everything I look at is Enterprise level. Enterprise level allows me to blame the vendor, because THEY are the ones that are selling this shit to the PHB who doesn't know how ridiculously over simplified the vendor makes it sound.
Re:Internal staff IS to blame (Score:4, Insightful)
I honestly wonder how many of these incidents blamed on outside vendors are actually the result of something the outside vendor did, and not the result of some manager yelling and screaming loud enough to make the vendor do something to shut him up and not lose business.