From addressing temporary fixes of the past to preparing existing cooling for the future, take in these 16 tips for successful projects in high-pressure environments.
Data centers are expected to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, and availability is measured in the highest of percentages. In fact, 99.999% availability (“5x9” or “five nines”) is a benchmark that is targeted by most data centers. To put it in perspective, 99.999% availability is equivalent to less than 5.26 minutes of outage over a year.
When equipment reaches the end of its useful life, data centers are prone to unplanned outages, and equipment replacement becomes critical. There are also instances where upgrades are necessary to become compliant with federal and other standards. Infrastructure components can be replaced to reduce preventive maintenance costs and to improve resiliency. Capacity and density can be increased, and loads can be consolidated across the same data center or across different data centers. In fact, there is a perfect opportunity to find and remediate points of failure, remove the Band-Aids, and figure out permanent solutions in existing data centers. There is also the potential to capture stranded capacity and space and maximize the ability to support IT loads.