A media, method, and data center power management system are provided to manage planned and unplanned data center power outages in a data center having network elements. During a planned outage, a remote device generates a request to simulate a power outage. The data center management system processes the request and suggests powering off one or more network elements based on a role associated with the network element and a measured power consumption associated with each network element. During an unplanned outage, the data center management system receives environmental data that triggers the generation of instructions to power off one or more network elements based on at least one of a calculated uptime associated with one or more backup generators, a role associated with each network element, and a power consumption associated with each network element.