Facility Management

Selecting a Monitoring System Monitoring can range from electrical power equipment supporting critical load such as UPS systems, diesel generators, PDU/RPP’s down to individual branch circuits within power panels. When evaluating a monitoring system consider what type of graphics are desired and available.  Pictorial diagrams displaying individual monitored components are helpful, especially ones that change color or light up in...

Every data center is different; size, structure, and complexity vary from site-to-site. The goal of facility management is to keep the site up and running, to avoid outages and maintain uptime. Where much of facility management’s energy is devoted to monitoring the system, it takes considerable time and resources to install and maintain equipment. Where monitoring needs to be owned...

Proper maintenance of cooling equipment will not only extend their life but also cut operating costs in the data center.  Remember cooling cost typically account for 40% of a data centers electrical expenses. Dirty or poorly maintained cooling equipment will not only decrease your cooling efficiency, contributing to lost capacity, but it also runs the risk of failure leading to...

  Click here to view, print and share a pdf of this article. Dirt can plug up perforated air tiles reducing the output as well as A/C filters and cooling coils. It can get into the cooling vents on the individual pieces of equipment within the server cabinets which will lessen their ability to cool themselves. Over time, the accumulation...

Disaster Recovery Planning Click here to view, print and share a pdf of this article. The average cost of an unplanned data center outage is $7,900 per minute, a 41% increase since 2010.  The average outage lasted 86 minutes resulting in an average cost per incident of $690,000.  Ponemon Institute: 2013 Study on Data Center Outages With data center downtime...

  Click here to view, print and share a pdf of this article. Maximizing Power Efficiencies Energy inefficiencies cost data centers money on two fronts.  The use of energy costs money and the inefficient use of energy requires more energy and thus more money.  One of the biggest byproducts of inefficient energy use is heat generation.  Heat that needs to...

Data Center Buildings - Physical Security   Security needs vary based on the size, location and data housed in your data center. Data Center security is a lot like an onion.  Not only does it make you cry, you need to have it in multiple layers built up from the area you’re trying to protect. …Anon. View, print and share...

Commissioning with Load Banks   Click here for a pdf to view, print and share Commissioning is defined by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) as a quality-oriented process for achieving, verifying, and documenting that the performance of facilities, systems and assemblies meets the defined objectives and criteria. When building or upgrading your data center...

Improving Data Center Energy Efficiency   Click here to view pdf of this article and print and share. Huge gains have been made over the past few years to improve energy efficiencies.  Implementing best practices such as preventing airflow bypass, installing blanking panels, sealing openings in the raised floor, and utilizing hot-cold aisle configurations have helped many data centers lower...

Data Center Safety Tips   Click here to view, print and share a pdf of this article. Even though a data center appears to be a quiet, safe, unassuming environment there is safety risks all about.  Electrical ircuits, acids, gases, flammable materials, and fuels are just some of the areas that represent potential safety hazards. Poor safety can lead to...