Dear Community friends, hello!
This year our pledge is to provide you with more content of your interest.
As last year a lot of you wanted to learn more about equipment rooms and thus enquired about this topic through the Community search bar, here you have it - your very own blog about the 4 most important tips for an efficient equipment room! Bear with me for the next few minutes for an informative post on how to organize and optimize the equipment room better!
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
For those of you who aren't aware about what an equipment room is, a little bit of background information will come in handy.
According to ITpedia.nl, an equipment room 'contains the cabling panel (the location for backbone cabling), telephone systems, power protection, uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs), LAN equipment (such as firewalls, routers, core switches and hubs) and any servers and data storage equipment, including the associated cabinets'.
Being packed with sensitive equipment, it is obvious that won't be too much human 'traffic' around the room. The access is usually granted only to some individuals (system administrators) and only after receiving the required clearance, as the door stays shut for the others. And why would it be open for everyone? It is usually cold in there because to the cold air conditioning cooling down the overheating equipment.
LAYOUT
The general layout principles of the equipment room are as follows:
it should meet anticipated requirements for laying out and maintaining communication cables and power cables;
cabling distance should be minimized, which eases cable maintenance, reduces potential communication faults and raises efficiency.
Therefore, the ideal layout of an equipment room should look something like this:
TIP #1 - ENSURE THE RIGHT WORKING CONDITIONS
'What are the right working conditions in an equipment room?', you may wonder. Well, wonder no more. There are 2 main variables that must always be in check should you want your equipment to perform at its optimal levels: humidity and temperature.
Humidity should always find itself in the 40-60% range in order to reduce the risk of static electricity, while the temperature should be adjusted in a way that prevents the equipment from overheating.
TIP #2 - PROTECT THE EQUIPMENT AGAINST FIRE
This brings us to the second tip - how to avoid the equipment to burn. We all know that a fire can cause significant damage to the equipment, but even a small flame that generates the tiniest bit of smoke smoke can damage it.
That is why it is crucial to provide good ventilation within the equipment room, which not only can be achieved by installing the latest industrial A/C in it - allowing the equipment to breathe by not placing all devices next to each other should also do the trick. Frequently perform fire risk inspections to avoid the creation of a fire-related hazard in the equipment room.
TIP #3 - KEEP IT TIDY
It goes without saying that an untidy enquipment room can easily become a hazard. Therefore, try to have all wires connected and routed correctly, remove the unused ones as soon as possible, keep only the strictly necessary items and regularly check the cords and sockets for fraying for damage.
Needless to say, dust the devices off as soon as you notice dust or dirt settling on or in the device.
TIP #4 - INVEST IN A MONITORING SYSTEM
Although it may be a bit costly in the beginning, an equipment room monitoring system will definitely pay off in time. Why? Because no one can afford network outages due to the loss of critical functions in the equipment room. Networks going down translates into thousands in repair bills and many upset customers, which is why it is extremely important to regularly check everything via diagnosis software so that you can replace them before they fail.
THE BOTTOM LINE
The server room is the brain of the IT function within the company, so it must be monitored and protected at all costs. I hope this blog provides a clear insight into how to do just that. Stay tuned for more fresh content by subscribing to the Community blog!
