One of the things we often take for granted is our health. We tend to neglect things like taking our vitamins, eating right or visiting our doctor regularly. For enterprises, taking care of our data center’s health is critical.
An ailing data center can have disastrous effects to your business. In fact, the 2016 Ponemon Institute study on data center downtime found that a minute of downtime leads to a loss of up to $8,851.
So what can you do to keep your data center healthy? Simple: Preventive Maintenance (PM). Just like regular visits to the doctor, original equipment manufacturer (OEM)-trained technicians can help you diagnose possible issues within your critical infrastructure and resolve it promptly through systematic inspections, detection and correction of failures. What’s more, routine maintenance increases the life of your equipment by identifying needed repairs and upgrades.
PM covers all aspects of your critical infrastructure, from power, cooling to electrical systems. Note, though, that the same Ponemon Institute study found that UPS battery failure remains to be the leading cause of data center downtime and attention should be given to servicing your UPS.
The idea of having a PM strategy in your organization’s critical infrastructure sounds straightforward, but is often overlooked by decision-makers either due to lack of available resources or priority. True enough, we’ve all been guilty of neglecting to undergo “maintenance” even in our daily lives. Can you think of an instance when you’ve put off having your car serviced by professionals, either because you lack time or are simply too lazy to do so? Or the time when you decided to delay going to your dentist until your tooth starts to ache and it’s too late?
A good PM strategy involves understanding the performance of each aspect of your critical infrastructure. For example, the ideal PM for your UPS is four times a year, while for your thermal management units require more attention with six times a year. This is something that you have to discuss with your OEM-technician. Regardless, regular PM increases the Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) of your equipment. A higher MTBF means a more reliable unit.
I talk more about having a good PM strategy in this article.
