Data Centres and COVID-19: Recovery planning

At time of writing, there are no reports of significant data centre outages resulting from COVID-19, but operators do not see this as cause for complacency: on the contrary, this is a time when careful planning and relentless vigilance are essential.   Recovery also presents operators with a number of challenges.  Many of the measures taken involve additional cost or contribute to a growing backlog.  Operators must also recover operations to meet the new normal – without necessarily knowing what it is yet - and ensure they can prosper in the changed business conditions that our post-COVID world may impose. 

These notes provide an overview of the approaches that operators are taking during this new, finely balanced, phase: our collective recovery towards something resembling normality.  They summarise actions and procedures and identify issues.  Useful links are included at the end.  As with other material on this site. These are informal notes, collating observations and do not constitute guidance or a formal position statement.