What keeps data center operators up at night? Among other things, worries about the safety and reliability of their assets. Staying competitive, maintaining 24/7 uptime, and meeting customer demand can all seem like overwhelming tasks – especially while operating on a lean budget.
The good news is that safety and reliability are very compatible goals, especially in the data center. An efficient, proactive maintenance strategy will deliver both greater reliability and increased security, so that your data center can support ever-growing demand while maintaining the trust of its customers.
In this article, I’ll talk about the best practices for maintenance teams tasked with increasing safety and uptime. I’ll explain how choosing the right tools can help your data center thrive and scale, without increasing costs.
Baking In Safety and Efficiency
Solid maintenance practices start at the commissioning stage.
There’s no getting around the fact that a data center build is labor-intensive and demanding. Every single connection, electrical point, and fiber optic cable needs to be tested and verified. If you’re not careful, the commissioning stage has enormous potential for error and wasted resources, especially in a hyperscale location. Here’s how to solve that problem.
Choose Your Tools Wisely
It’s important to use the right tools and build efficiencies into the commissioning stage. Think of this stage as an opportunity to design a process that makes sense for your crew and your resources.
If you’re working with a lean maintenance crew, make sure to use tools that are purpose-built for ease of use, so that everyone on your team can achieve high-quality results right away. Look for cable testers, Optical Time Domain Reflectometers, and Optical Loss Test Sets that are designed with intuitive interfaces and settings.
Select tools that comply with, or exceed, industry standards for accuracy. Precision results will make a huge difference when it comes to the long-term lifespan of your assets. Getting accurate readings the first time also eliminates the need for re-work.
Opt for Safety and Efficiency
As always, safety and efficiency go hand in hand. When you’re building a large or hyperscale data center, small gains in efficiency add up quickly. If your tools allow you to test each connection point just a few seconds more quickly, you’ll see significant savings by the end of the data center construction.
Once the commissioning stage is complete, it’s a question of consolidating your efficiency gains, and finding new ways to keep your data center resilient without raising costs. Let’s see what that looks like.
Using Non-Contact Tools for Safety and Efficiency
Once your data center is fully built, I recommend implementing non-contact tools as far as possible. Done right, this will drastically improve your uptime and performance, while reducing overall costs.
What does non-contact look like? For some equipment, like the pumps and motors that support your cooling equipment, wireless sensors can monitor asset health in real time, tracking vibration levels and temperature.
Using Digital and AI Tools
Tools like a CMMS, or an AI-powered diagnostic engine, sift through asset health data to pinpoint early indications of an emerging fault. Today’s AI tools are trained on billions of data points and can recognize faults in assets and component parts. They can even determine the fault severity level and issue detailed reports on the health of every critical asset in the facility.
Once the fault is identified, CMMS creates a work order and a technician examines the asset, making repairs as needed. For lean maintenance crews, digital tools free up valuable time and labor, so that experienced technicians can focus on carrying out repairs, instead of reading machine tests or generating work orders.
The bottom line: real-time wireless monitoring keeps your technicians safe, eliminating the need for route-based testing with a handheld device. No more sending workers to squeeze into tight spaces or behind machinery just to get a measurement. By extension, no more risk of human error or inaccurate readings. Digital tools don’t make careless mistakes, no matter how often they perform the same task.
Of course, wireless monitoring isn’t the only non-contact approach out there.
Bringing in the bots
It’s now increasingly common to send robots into the data center to perform basic tests. This accomplishes the crucial function of keeping people out of the data center, where they could potentially hurt themselves or damage something.
I often see robots used to perform thermal imaging tests. Thermal imaging is a key element in many maintenance processes, especially in the data center. It’s the best means of pinpointing electrical faults, wiring issues, faulty connections, and other early indicators of major issues.
Using a robot to conduct the testing (or a mounted, non-contact thermal imager) allows you to monitor frequently, for accurate and precise results. This also protects your team from potential dangers like arc flashes and electrical shocks.
Opening the (infrared) window
Infrared windows, installed directly into power cabinets, make power quality monitoring both safer and more efficient. This is by far the safest approach for operators and technicians. It also guarantees readings will be taken regularly and speeds up the measurement process, by eliminating the time-consuming permitting step. The more frequently your team takes readings, the more effectively they can identify emerging issues and get ahead of the serious faults that could impact your assets and your whole facility.
Successful scaling through automation
Standardizing and automating workflows can enable fast, effective scaling. These processes also extend the reach of lean maintenance teams, so that managers can oversee larger facilities while still delivering high performance.
Automated monitoring and testing – with wireless tools, robots, and non-contact technology—deliver data in near real-time. When you pair this with AI, or with data analytic software, you’ll be able to identify emerging asset faults long before they become serious enough to cause downtime. This predictive technology enables far greater uptime and productivity, while also extending the lifespan of your assets.
Automated AI diagnostic tools, condition monitoring, and robotic testing all enable data centers to scale and to continue to deliver the speed and performance that today’s digitalized economy relies on.
# # #
About the Author
Mike Slevin is a General Manager (Networks, Routine Maintenance & Process Instrument) at Fluke, a company known worldwide for its electronic test and measurement tools. Mike works with data centers and industrial clients to improve energy efficiency, safety, and reliability through better monitoring and maintenance practices.
