Recent market studies concluded that businesses continue leveraging colocation data centre services as critical components of the corporate infrastructure. Yet another research predicted that the global colo market by 2020 is likely to expand exponentially, driven by a shrink in IT budgets for enterprises alongside the rising need for application support and accessibility.
More and more companies nowadays rely on colocation providers, which means these facilities need proper maintenance and upgrade to the current industry standards. Downtime, for even a single minute, can cost organizations thousands of dollars, not to mention a corporate reputation that makes it imperative for service providers to ensure 100-per cent backup.
This is when a complete maintenance cycle and development strategies become crucial elements of operations. Still, what should customers look for in a colocation data centre service provider? Read on to find out!
Importance of maintenance & development strategies
IT landscape in the present age isn’t faced with costly downtimes but also harms the reputation of the brand and enterprise altogether. This is especially true if the facility supports client-facing resources that are a priority to customer care service. One of the biggest and most common causes of unplanned downtime is substandard maintenance and careless development strategies.
Other reasons are human biases and incapable management that cause downtime and other disasters. Even some of the most optimal data centres with advanced technology and backup can only compensate for consistent system maintenance and degraded components.
Types of Maintenance
When brainstorming on maintenance strategies, there’re a few different types of colocation data centre customers to have an eye for. Obtaining details about the procedure is crucial as it shows dedication, reliability, and quality of service pertinent to uptime within the facility. The comprehensive strategy covers the following aspects;
Regular & detailed inspection
Internal staff should continue to inspect the systems and equipment to ensure proper working. This covers a daily inspection of generators, fuel levels, water temperature, distribution of electrical and mechanical equipment, plenum pressure, configuration and operating parameters of the system.
Continuous testing
Employees of the facility should test specific systems to ensure they’re operating within appropriate parameters. Standard procedures here include infrared, load testing as well as fail-over testing.
Analytical maintenance
This is a critical part of the data centre’s strategy as predictive or analytical maintenance leverages statistics and various parameters of the facility for possible changes, trends, or certain irregularities indicating potential failure and warning signs. This is the way staff members can address these issues before they mount.
Defensive maintenance
Defensive or preventive maintenance is designed to keep a piece of special equipment or component operating at its optimum through a specific technical function that prolongs the lifecycle. Maintenance may include filtration, changing the oil, and cleaning heat exchangers and electrical systems.
Strategies include predictive and preventative maintenance within the facility, thereby significantly reducing the potential of system failure. Operating staff and working personnel can identify and address the issues that can be planned or unplanned. Regular maintenance is thus significant for critical system uptime.
Components of a lifecycle strategy
It’s critical ensuring facility managers have a lifecycle strategy ready to implement in conjunction with many other best practices to boost the equipment lifecycle. Specific strategies to include here are;
Replace before total collapse
Replacing electrical, IT, and networking components after a specific timeframe are essential to avoid untimely trouble or total system crash between work so that the user or customer mightn’t experience any inconvenience.
Variation
Likewise, many components must rotate according to a particular schedule, ensuring optimum work performance and balance.
Auxiliary/replacement
Finally, customers should be 100 per cent confident in the strategies of the colocation data centre to identify possible defects and have the systems up and running optimally at all times.
Conclusion
Above are some of the best strategies and practices for maintaining a data centre and keeping it up to the current industry standards.
