DSL™ - Downtime Severity Levels

Measuring the Depth of Downtime in Data Centers…

What are Downtime Severity Levels (DSL)

Downtime Severity Levels or DSL is a scale that measures the severity of a Data Center downtime, according to its impact level. It is designed to be used for Critical Essential Systems.

It is a seven levels scale, that classifies the severity of the Data Center downtime according to:

  • Causes of Downtime: These can be related to Inherent Events (Preventive Maintenance, Failures/CM, Critical Event), or Non-Inherent Events (Catastrophic Event, Catastrophic Failure).

  • Depth of Impact: Is basically the location affected by the maintenance/failure or by any other internal/external event related to Structures, Systems and Components (SSCs).

DSL and Depth of Impact of Downtime

Inherent

Downtimes

Critical Downtime

DSL 5

Data Center Critical Systems

Source: “Downtime Severity Levels (DSL) - A way of measure Impact of Downtime in Data Centers”. 7x24 Exchange Magazine - 2023 Spring Issue

The DSL was designed as a communication tool, in order to objectively categorize the severity of any event/incident that caused a downtime to any Component, System, Structure of a Data Center.

Component PM

Depth of Impact

Component Level

DSL 2

DSL 1

System Level

Critical Room Level

Site Level

Catastrophic Downtimes

DSL 7

Catastrophic Failure

DSL 6

Catastrophic Event

We propose two distint levels of Catastrophic Downtimes:

  • Catastrophic Events: Can be any hazardous event (fire, fuel spill, etc.) that impact the normal operation of the Data Center, but have not yet impacted the Critical Room. The downtime is confined to a specific area/systems.

  • Catastrophic Failure: is the escalation of a Catastrophic Event with Impact to the Critical Room (Outage).

These types of downtime, can be inherent or non-inherent to the systems and operation of the Data Center.

No Downtime = “DSL 0”

Critical Room Downtime

DSL 3

Component Failure/CM

System PM

DSL 4

System Failure/CM

Using DSL for Forensic Analysis

As shown in the figure Case Scenario #1: The DSL scale can be used to effectively run post-mortem analysis in order to determine:

  1. Chain Reaction (Components - Systems - Structures)

  2. Response Time (Total Downtime, Recovery Time)

  3. Potential Causes (Interactions - Human Induced Failures)

DSL graphical representation, can easily explain any abnormal incident, in a simple manner in order to represent the complete downtime event.

Do you want to know more about how to implement Downtime Severity Levels in your Data Center ?

Contact us: info@seresdc.com

Downtime Severity Levels Article was selected as Cover for 7x24 Exchange Magazine 2023 Spring Issue

Credits: 7x24 Exchange Magazine (2023 Spring Issue)