Re: 165 Halsey recurring power issues

[Eric Kuhnke <eric.kuhnke () gmail com>]

Bulk/high-volume hosting companies, dedicated server companies/small rack
unit count colocation operate on very thin margins. Unless a customer is
paying a LOT more per month they're not economically going to be connected
to true diverse A/B power.

In this case their use of the incorrectly-described A/B was probably
exclusively to handle the (not extremely rare) instances of rackmount
server power supply failures, to give each 1U or 2U size machine, or rack
of blades, two live power supplies with live power feeds. Nothing more
complicated than that.

On Mon, Oct 23, 2023 at 3:34 PM Aaron Wendel <aaron () wholesaleinternet net>
wrote:

> I toured The Planet years ago in Dallas and was told by the sales rep
> that A+B power was two circuits from the same PDU. :)
>
> I consider A+B power to be two distinct feeds, separate utility
> entrances, separate generators, separate UPS', PDU's, etc.  Past that I
> consider things like firewall separation, rated chases and such to be
> customer specific requirements.
>
> Aaron
>
> On 10/23/2023 9:38 AM, Babak Pasdar wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I wanted to get some feedback as to what is considered standard A/B
> > power setup when data centers sell redundant power.  It has always
> > been my understanding that A/B power means individually unique and
> > preferably alternate path connections to disparate UPS units.
> >
> > A few months ago, 165 Halsey took us down for several hours. They
> > claimed that a UPS failed causing this issue.  Our natural reaction
> > was that we have A/B redundant power so a failed UPS on the A circuit
> > should not take down the cabinet. Joe the facility manager claimed
> > that industry standard A/B power means two circuits to the same UPS,
> > which makes no sense to me.
> >
> > They committed to move us to A/B power with redundant circuits to
> > disparate UPS units.  However, we had a multi-hour outage again in
> > that site this weekend. At first glance it seems to be the same problem.
> >
> > We have checked with all of our other data center providers who have
> > confirmed A/B power is in fact individually unique connections to
> > disparate UPS units. 165 Halsey's definition of what constitutes
> > redundant power seems unique. Why would anyone pay extra for a second
> > connection to the same UPS?  However, I wanted to get feedback to see
> > if I am taking crazy pills here 🙂
> >
> > None-the-less, we have lost all confidence in this facility.
> >
> > Best Regards,
> >
> > Babak