When designing a power protection scheme for data centers, IT and facility managers must ask themselves whether a distributed or centralized backup strategy makes more sense. Unfortunately, there is no easy answer to that question. Companies must weigh each architectural advantages and disadvantages against their financial constraints, availability needs and management capabilities before deciding which one to employ.

This white paper explores the principle of centralized versus distributed bypass and will apply it equally to standalone monolithic and integrated-modular UPS architectures, especially trying to clarify the differences in two major areas:

• Reliability (in terms of comparative Mean Time Between Failure “MTBF”) and hence availability
• Fault clearing capacity and short-circuit withstand rating

By following the suggestions in this white paper, data center operators can simplify their decision-making process by receiving an overview of weaknesses and capabilities of both system designs, whichever strategy they ultimately select.