The key purpose of a dual-corded or dual-path electrical architecture is to ensure continuity of IT operations during a failure of part of the power distribution system, by providing an alternative power path. In a dual-corded data center environment, the loss of power on one path will cause the load to transfer to the other path, which can create an overload condition on that path. This can lead to a situation where the failure of one pathleads to the failure of both paths.
Authored by Neil Rasmussen, a new white paper from Schneider Electric explains this problem in-depth and advises on how to solve it. The paper provides a set of rules to ensure that a dual-path environment provides the expected fault tolerance.