Unplanned downtime in a data centre can be extremely costly and most organisations have preventative maintenance plans in place designed to mitigate risks from the most common failures. Air quality management is one area that is often overlooked by these plans.
When you speak to most data centre operators they would say their facilities are clean and on the surface this would appear to be true.
But dig a little deeper and you might be surprised what clean actually means.
Whether you like it or not, there is contamination in the air all the time one way or another. From people dust that comes from human traffic in the data centre, to fibres from their clothes to the dust carried in on their shoes. Poor working practices such as unboxing new equipment in the data centre can also compound the problem by introducing even more contamination.
This contamination is drawn into the servers and can clog the internal fans. Over time, this reduces the airflow and causes the temperatures inside the servers to increase.
The clogging effects of the contamination has two consequences;
A lack of good data centre hygiene is a serious problem and can cost you money in more ways than one.
Awareness of the issues of contamination in data centres is growing in the OEM communities. Several major hardware manufacturers recommend in their installation guidelines that every effort should be made to ensure that the environment is as contaminant free as possible. A number of manufacturers are also considering air quality as a factor when assessing warranty claims.
Some basic rules can go a long way to reducing the problem;
When you speak to most data centre operators they would say their facilities are clean and on the surface this would appear to be true.
But dig a little deeper and you might be surprised what clean actually means.
Whether you like it or not, there is contamination in the air all the time one way or another. From people dust that comes from human traffic in the data centre, to fibres from their clothes to the dust carried in on their shoes. Poor working practices such as unboxing new equipment in the data centre can also compound the problem by introducing even more contamination.
This contamination is drawn into the servers and can clog the internal fans. Over time, this reduces the airflow and causes the temperatures inside the servers to increase.
The clogging effects of the contamination has two consequences;
- Firstly, the higher temperatures will cause the internal fans to work harder, consuming more energy making your IT services more expensive to operate.
- Secondly, the higher temperatures can cause an increase in equipment failures which reduces the reliability of your IT services.
A lack of good data centre hygiene is a serious problem and can cost you money in more ways than one.
Awareness of the issues of contamination in data centres is growing in the OEM communities. Several major hardware manufacturers recommend in their installation guidelines that every effort should be made to ensure that the environment is as contaminant free as possible. A number of manufacturers are also considering air quality as a factor when assessing warranty claims.
Some basic rules can go a long way to reducing the problem;
- Make sure all equipment is unboxed outside the data centre to prevent contamination
- Check new equipment is clean inside before you install it
- Install takmats at the entrances to stop contamination being walked into the data centre
- Use a vacuum cleaner fitted with a HEPA filter to prevent dust being recirculated
- Create a cleaning policy to ensure everyone cleans up after they have completed any work
- Include regular specialist cleaning as part of your preventative maintenance plan
- Improved efficiency of cooling infrastructure
- Improved power consumption
- Increased reliability and uptime of IT services