Redundant Power Option Servers

High availability servers mean minimal down-time for your mission critical applications.

An advanced feature on servers and high end workstations is to have a redundant power supply, this feature means you have two seperate power supplies powering the server or workstation.

Benefits of Redundant Power supplies :

Two seperate power supplies - If one power supply fails, the server or workstation will continue to operate. An audiable alarm will sound to alert the user of the failure.

The Server or Worksation can run happily with a failed power supply, until a replacement is sourced.

Redudant power suplies are hot swappable - which means you can replace the faulty unit without turning the server or workstation off. The power supply usually just slides out of the back of the system (without the need for screwdrivers).  This reduces or eliminates any down time on mission critical servers or workstations.

Redundent power supplies are usually powered by seperate power plugs/cables, which can also be plugged in to seperate UPS's (Uniteruptrable Power Supply),  This is a another safety feature, so if one of the plugs is accidently switched off, or the Fuse pops, or the UPS Fails, the Server will continue to run using the other power source.

As power supplies and hard drives are usually the only components with moving parts - they are often the most likely components to fail. This is why mission critical servers usually have redundenet power supplies and RAID controllers to eliminate these types of failures occuring. 

Redundent Power Supplies do not use any more significant power than a single power supply, as they just share the total power consuption of the Server until a power suply fails at which point the working power supply instantley takes over. This is seemless to the user.