In 2007, a survey of data center managers was commissioned and found that over 45% of the IT managers and facilities personnel that were interviewed had experienced an air-conditioning failure within the previous 12 months. Being in the business of environmental monitoring , horror stories of failing cooling systems are often heard. The question is:
Are the air-con systems we rely on today any more reliable than they were almost 10 years ago?
To update the survey, nearly 200 IT Managers were recently contacted and the feedback was startling: Just over 64% had experienced an AC failure of some description within the last 12 months! In the main, these failures resulted in overheating and water leaks in their server rooms and data centers. Fortunately, for many of those that shared their personal experience, disaster was avoided as they had a reliable environmental monitoring system and a robust alerting procedure in place that allowed them to step in before permanent damage to their IT hardware occurred.
It is hard to pinpoint why this increase in failures has come about. However, it is impossible to escape the fact that closely monitoring the temperature within critical IT environments and receiving immediate alerts when problems arise, is now more important than ever.
Air-conditioning failure in any Server Room or Data Center can be catastrophic. If left unchecked, temperatures can quickly soar. Your hardware may automatically shut-down to prevent any lasting damage, but you’ll still be left with a sizeable amount of downtime while rebooting and testing. If you aren’t so lucky, you may experience hardware failure along with the associated replacement cost and an even greater amount of network downtime during repairs.
The solution? Minimise your risks by installing a reliable Server Room Environmental Monitoring System such as the Jacarta InterSeptor. This smart and easy to install device monitors temperature, humidity, water leaks, power dropouts, and many other parameters, sending instant alerts to multiple people as well as keeping the historical records for analysis.
Is your server room at risk? Contact us today to discuss a suitable solution.
