Your Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) system needs to remain in peak operating condition in order to keep your critical facilitiy’s equipment protected during unplanned outages. The loss of any business critical systems can be staggering; therefore – facility and data center managers must perform regular UPS maintenance to make sure critical systems stay running in the chance of a sudden loss of power or voltage drop. In this article, we will talk about UPS maintenance, extending the life of your UPS batteries and capacitor replacement recommendations.

A computer room air conditioning (CRAC) unit is a device that monitors and maintains the temperature, air distribution and humidity in a computer room or data center. As more equipment is squeezed into IT spaces, it is more important than ever to ensure that each component of the support infrastructure is operating at maximum efficiency and reliability. The failure of a CRAC unit can lead to downtime, which of course means a loss of service and that can translate into a loss of money and often times a loss of customers.

Data centers require large amounts of energy to operate and we know that the push now is to reduce the use of data center energy usage — green initiatives, we hear about them everyday. Additional encouragement is coming from utilities throughout the United States in the form of data center energy efficiency rebates and incentives. As a matter of fact, I was at a recent data center function and was speaking to a person that runs the local utility’s program manager for commercial & industrial energy efficiency group and he said he literally has "tons of money he needs to give away in the form of data center energy incentives by the end of the year".

 I’m sure most, if not all of you, have heard about Amazon Web Services recent outages at their data centers – could any of these outages been helped by data center thermal imaging? The power, cooling and support systems are vital to the continuous flow of information in data centers and telecom facilities. If you had the ability to identify and resolve heat-related issues in your mission critical environment would you do it? Performing data center infrared thermography or thermal imaging predictive maintenance on your critical support infrastructure is a must and should be seriously considered in your regular data center maintenance schedule.

We want to share a great article from The Data Center Journal regarding Data Center Maintenance and how critical it is in keep your facility up and running. It points out that lack of data center maintenance is the root cause of anywhere from a third to a half of downtime
events in the data center. It also mentions the 2011 study of data center managers conducted by Ponemon Institute and sponsored by Emerson Network Power: This study shows that on average the cost of data center downtime was approximately $5,600 per
minute, and the survey's average reported incident length of 90 minutes makes the average cost of a single downtime event to be approximately $505,000—surely that is something most data center managers cannot afford. Here is an excerpt from the article:

In this article, we will share some data center maintenance and efficiency best practices that will help data center facility managers keep your data centers up and running as well as helping to save energy and control costs.

According to AccuWeather, the spring of 2012 was one of the warmest in years and it will fuel active severe weather. We all know the 2012 tornado season got off to a very fast pace from normal standards, and unfortunately it may be a prolonged year of severe weather in the United States. 

For these reasons - you need to make sure your telecom  or data center facility doesn't get left in the dark during the next storm.  

Take a look at what  Michael Donnellan of Access Northeast had to say about our emergency service at one of their data centers last year during the brunt of Hurricane Irene.

EEC's 24x7 telecom & data center power and cooling emergency repair service program is an aggressive and rapid response mechanism developed specifically for telecom and data center operations. We require all personnel to be on-call and available to handle multiple emergencies and our technicians arrive on-site with "crash kits" containing replacement parts for 90% of failures and have access to a vast parts inventory.  Our philosophy is to aggressively and rapidly respond to system failures with the right personnel and the right material to bring your systems back on-line quickly.

So with the severe weather outlook - don't wait until it is too late. Because your business cannot afford to be without power.

Would like to share an article from The DataCenter Journal  that talks about diesel generator fuel cleaning and how critical it is in regards to data center maintenance and reducing downtime in your data center - here is the article:

Then you should know that preventive maintenance strategies are an important part of best practices for any telecom power supply equipment, and a key factor in maintaining the 24x7 uptime and availability that is required of any telecommunications facility.

Are you familiar with DataCenter Dynamics? They offer everything to help manage your data center from their premier Data Center Conferences to their variety of training courses and their Focus Magazine. They live up to their description as "being a full service B2B information provider at the core of which is a unique series of events tailored specifically to deliver enhanced knowledge and networking opportunities to professionals that design, build and operate data centers.