Recently, Mission Critical Magazine published an article titled Ten Things You Want in Your Data Center. The article broke down into two subsections: five things an IT administrator should NOT do and five things ALL IT staff should know. Below is a summary:
Five Things an IT Administrator Should NOT Do
- Bring liquids into the data center (cans or bottles). Liquids not intended to be in the data center can obviously damage equipment, but even unopened cans and bottles can cause problems as well.
- Attempt to solve problems with a floor tile puller. Problems arise when the IT staff doesn’t understand that pressurization and airflow of a raised floor “system” is vital to maintaining the temperature and integrity of the cooling system.
- Place a fan in the hot aisle. Placing a fan in this aisle will mix the air and create inefficiencies in the cooling and airflow, which impacts the entire system.
- Plug things into the extra outlets on a Rack PDU (extra outlets do not mean extra capacity). “More downtime can be attributed to someone opening the wrong breaker or plugging something into the wrong outlet than any other human activity in the data center.”
- Try to figure things out on your own. The data center is a system, and all the subsystems must be coordinated for proper execution of any project, small or large.
Five Things ALL IT Staff Should Know
- Data Centers are Engineered Assets. Changes can significantly affect performance of the equipment or airflow.
- Ohm’s Law: E=I x R (the interrelationship of voltage, resistance and amperage). Understanding this relationship can make even the most vexing power issues easier to understand.
- How power makes it from the pole to the rack. If IT understood what happens to the power coming into the building – where it is distributed, what voltage it is as it makes its way to the UPS, PDU and rack – the conversation around growing data center capacity would be easier.
- Where your energy is goes. Ask your facilities manager. The reason why some IT personnel take things into their own hands vary; lack of resources or limited relationship with the facilities team are often problems.
- You can get killed in here! The number of very dangerous systems in an average data center and mechanical room must be acknowledged.
Mission Critical is the fastest-growing journal providing information to data center and emergency backup power professionals. The magazine and Web site provide practical solutions to all issues facing the data center designer, manager, owner and operator.
