🔌 Power Outage: What Happens to the Cloud?

Currently, not a day goes by without the looming power shortage for the coming winter and the associated uncertainty being discussed, commented on, and debated in the media.

Uncertainty among the population is rising, people are buying candles and batteries, and creating emergency supplies for a possible blackout. Companies are also preparing for all eventualities, creating emergency plans, and want to know from us whether our cloud solutions will still be accessible during a power outage.

We are happy to answer this question and provide reassurance.

Backup ONE Swiss Cloud

All our cloud solutions and related services are provided from our "Backup ONE Swiss Cloud". This spans two data centers, our CH-EAST in Zurich and our CH-WEST in Geneva, with all data being synchronized in real-time between both data centers. Thus, all data remains available even if one of the two data centers fails.

Certified Data Centers

We operate our own hardware and take care of the internet connectivity to ensure both replication between our locations and round-the-clock operation. What we don't do is operate the buildings where our data centers are located. We also source our electricity and the required cooling, which is essential for operating high-performance hardware, from the data center operators. To meet the highest security and availability requirements here as well, we exclusively work with certified providers. In Zurich, we operate our cloud in a Tier IV data center, and in Geneva in a Tier III data center.

Requirements for Tier IV / III Certified Data Centers

To achieve a Tier III certification, the following minimum requirements must be met:

• Availability guarantee: 99.982%
• Downtime per year: <1.6 hours
• On-site security personnel: Yes, 24/7
• Autonomous power supply: min. 72 hours

The requirements for achieving a Tier IV certification are even stricter:

• Availability guarantee: 99.995%
• Downtime per year: <26.3 minutes
• On-site security personnel: Yes, 24/7
• Autonomous power supply: min. 92 hours

In our data centers, autonomous emergency power supply is ensured through diesel generators and correspondingly large diesel tanks. Furthermore, the data center operators have delivery contracts for additional diesel to keep the data centers running autonomously even beyond the minimum required 72 or 96 hours.

Will the Cloud Remain Accessible?

Here we can answer with a clear "Yes". Even during an extended power outage, the "Backup ONE Swiss Cloud" remains online and all data stored on it continues to be well protected.