How Amadeus keeps travellers moving

This is one of several 12 cylinder diesel generators that are kept on standby. At Erding, the datacentre can remain operational for between two to three days should there be a major power cut.

Significantly, the generators can match the power requirements of the server rooms, just eight seconds after a power failure. Even so, the datacentre's uninterruptible power supplies will carry on running for 20 minutes to enable servers and other critical hardware to be powered-down gracefully.

For Krips, the N+1 redundant configuration and high-speed fail-over only represent one half of the story of keeping Erding running 24 by 7, 365 days a year. "In the last couple of years we've seen in operations the need for more and more highly skilled people. IT operations has moved from people who move boxes to become a very sophisticated discipline, where you need to think through process automation and how to make processes fail-safe."

There will always be a balance between enabling highly skilled operations staff to solve problems, and the methodical processes that need to be adhered to to minimise human error. Krips believes in the power of a checklist, such as the pre-flight checklist a pilot and airline captain would go through. "The pilots are highly skilled people but they are following certain procedures to make sure nothing is overlooked."