In a world that’s always on, data center operational readiness is vital. According to meteorological records, there’s been a consistent rise in weather-related disasters since 1980. Extreme weather can take place just about anywhere, with hurricanes, heat waves, ice and snowstorms increasing in frequency. If a natural disaster strikes your region, how prepared is your operations team? Below we discuss how you can ensure the preparedness of your data center emergency response.

Risk Assessment

Performing a risk assessment for your data center is a great way to identify a baseline of the current state of the mission-critical facility, and a cost estimate for improving overall performance and mitigating infrastructure risk. At Ascent, our team works with customers to develop project plans that address infrastructure risks, procure required equipment and manage your data center project.

From assessing mechanical system components that control moisture detection, to fire protection systems such as detection, suppression, and compliance requirements, a risk assessment creates a baseline to understand better your facility’s existing conditions, single points of failure and other areas of potential risk to your data center and its equipment, especially in a weather-related event.

24×7 Support & Emergency Response Plans

Advanced weather tracking and notification systems can provide warning of what’s to come, but they cannot predict the impact to your sites. By understanding your site risks, you can develop an advanced plan with the help of a data center operating partner. Part of that plan may include having a 24x7x365 critical systems monitoring and critical event support team for emergency coordination and on-call technical support during an event.

The Ascent Operations Center (AOC) responds to emergency requests and alerts that come through phone, email, DCIM, and BMS alarm queues, and facilitates communication and coordination during emergency events. Ascent also provides a platform that can do the hard work for you — one that’s customized to your specific requirements. Navigator is a facility-based approach to managing critical systems equipment inventory, maintenance activities and performance metrics.

Finally, it’s critical to follow an Incident Response Plan. In a previous blog, Ascent recommends 10 Emergency Response Procedures that need to be included to ensure data center site operations teams stay one step ahead of the critical response curve.

Before the assessments, response plans, and 24x7x365 support, choosing the right data center partner is imperative. Ascent understands the potential risks in a wide range of critical facility design topologies and equipment conditions. As your partner, we are dedicated to keeping your operations running effectively and efficiently from initial preparation through recovery. You can contact our team directly to learn more about preparing for emergency events at 1.877.427.2368, or email us at answers@ascentcorp.com.

In our recent blog about workflows and improving operational reliability in data centers, we made the statement: “While DCIM and other monitoring packages have taken great strides in providing real-time, current-state information, they aren’t designed to help manage your equipment portfolio.” We’d like to use this blog to provide a little more support for our statement. Today’s DCIM systems do an amazing job with facility monitoring and have far surpassed conventional building controls or building automation systems in their ability to integrate with both mission-critical physical and IT infrastructure.

Navigator: The Big View

That last word—infrastructure—is the difference between DCIM and DCOM packages. Ascent’s Navigator platform is a DCOM (data center operations management) package. While DCIM packages focus on the micro—right down to the server level—our DCOM solution brings together all the macro views to manage your entire data center portfolio. The two are not competing platforms, but rather, complimentary systems that look at different sides of the same coin.

For example, DCOM platforms like Navigator provide key connections between facility teams, maintenance providers, and 24/7 operations center. In this way, Navigator streamlines the maintenance contracting, maintenance services, and invoicing processes, while capturing data to provide real-time, key information to facility managers and executive leaders for portfolio oversight and SLA tracking. DCIM systems provide key connections as well, although their strength is in the rack-level management of IT equipment, and the systems that supply power and cooling.

Financial Management

Customized workflows monitor service events, give operations transparency, and help control spending at a site and portfolio level. Navigator shows the maintenance procedures that are currently in process, those that have just been completed, as well as those that are still committed to the budget. It shows notification-to-creation and creation-to-escalation metrics that score vendor performance. Navigator also allows you to manage your facility spending and decision-making in real time so you can maintain your budget, all at the macro level. And at the micro level, DCIM packages allow you to monitor events at the rack and row level—giving you yet another perspective on your facility that, along with your DCOM, brings the whole system into perspective.

Conclusion

To learn more about Ascent’s data center operations management DCOM platform, view our video here. You can also contact our team at 1.877.427.2368, or email us at answers@ascentcorp.com.

While uptime is a given, the challenge in daily data center operations is seldom the equipment itself, but rather the management of workflows designed to ensure its proper operation. In some ways, the CRAH units and UPS system run themselves. But to ensure that they continue to do so day after day means managing the data that they produce, the contractors that service and repair them, and the processes in place to keep the operation running smoothly.

The Operations Challenge

It seems like the more equipment you have, the more sites you manage, and the broader the geography, the greater the challenge in managing workflows. Part of the challenge is that the industry does not necessarily provide the tools you need to get the job done. While DCIM and other monitoring packages have taken great strides in providing real-time, current state information, they aren’t designed to help manage your equipment portfolio.

Stopgap Portfolio Management

Many companies manage their critical sites with traditional property management software and processes, while others have been forced into expensive work ticketing systems with limited in-the-field support capabilities. Unfortunately, this is a little like the proverbial square peg in the round hole. Traditional property management software simply isn’t built for the equipment and processes found in data centers.

Worse probably are manual processes, checklists, and Excel spreadsheets. This approach leaves room for error, and reporting on a multi-site portfolio is difficult at best. Often maintenance service records and documentation aren’t centrally located, which means an onsite tech can’t quickly access current MOPs or service history. On the financial side, this approach makes it difficult to tie costs to specific equipment, which makes it difficult to identify areas to improve operations and reduce energy consumption and expenses.

The Platform Solution

At Ascent, we think the key is to simplify critical facility management for mission critical sites and infrastructure is through purpose-built software and targeted services. Critical facility managers need an operational platform that provides a key connection between their facility teams, maintenance providers, and our 24×7 live support. It is important to streamline the maintenance contracting, maintenance services and invoice processes in order to capture data to provide real time information to facility managers and executive leaders for portfolio oversight and SLA tracking.

Conclusion

Looking to learn more about improving workflows and operational reliability in data centers? Watch our new Navigator video for solutions to these and other critical facility management challenges. You can also contact our team directly to learn more about critical facility management solutions at 1.877.427.2368, or email us at answers@ascentcorp.com.

Particularly in the mission-critical industry, predictive spending is preferable to a break/fix approach; furthermore, managing to known risks is the key to uptime and reliability. Here we conclude a two-part series on the importance of understanding – and truly evaluating –each mission-critical asset in your portfolio. In the first blog, we focused on six ways we look at our customer’s assets to arrive at a fair, consistent, and reasonable evaluation of each asset. In this blog, we shift our focus to the second step of evaluating an asset’s condition, which is its preventative maintenance history.

Maintenance History

In our previous blog, we addressed the details of evaluating the asset’s environment, profile, utilization, degradation, operating characteristics, and chances of failure within all of the critical systems of the facility. The next step in the evaluation process is to look at the maintenance history of each asset.

We subdivide maintenance history into three distinct categories:

Regardless of your maintenance plan going forward, it is critical to know the maintenance history of every asset so that a proper trajectory of likely maintenance needs can be considered for the future. Additionally, some equipment may have a stellar preventative maintenance history but has a negative deferred maintenance and break/fix history. Understanding the pluses and minuses within each maintenance category will yield a more accurate understanding of the condition of the asset.

Making Management Manageable

An ounce of prevention will always pay dividends when it comes to maintaining data-center assets and planning for their maintenance needs. The more you know about any given piece of equipment, the more you can do to avoid surprises and keep your mission-critical train on the tracks, running, and on time.

Conclusion

To learn more about comprehensive capital planning and improving operational reliability in data centers, contact our team at 1.877.427.2368, or email us at answers@ascentcorp.com.

In a recently released whitepaper “Beyond Current State: Asset Evaluation for Better Capital Planning” we argue that understanding both the condition and the criticality of your data-center infrastructure is necessary for making the most informed capital-investment decisions. Yet, many operators are challenged when it comes to being able to plan for future growth or investment.

Here we begin a two-part series on the importance of understanding – and truly evaluating –each mission-critical asset in your portfolio. In this first part, we will focus on six ways we look at our customer’s assets to arrive at a fair, consistent, and reasonable assessment of current state.

Asset Conditions Defined

Here is a list of questions to ask when evaluating a mission-critical asset—from air-handling units and chilled water pumps to leak detection cabling:

Environment: What is the asset’s operating environment, including ambient temperature and humidity? Does it conform to the manufacturer’s recommended installation and operating specifications?

Profile: How does the asset function within the system it supports? Is it appropriately sized to the load? Does it efficiently and effectively conform to the overall system performance?

Utilization: Are the run times of the equipment low, normal, or high when compared with manufacturer recommendations or industry standards?

Degradation: What is the current, physical state of the equipment? Are any identified conditions—such as wear and tear, damage, or corrosion—normal when compared with manufacturer or industry recommended operating standards?

Operating Characteristics: What is the current operating state of the gear? Has careful track been kept of any leaks, noises, or vibrations, and do you know if they are normal when compared with manufacturer or industry recommendations?

Chance of Failure: Within the full context of the asset’s condition and the manufacturer’s data, are there any indications of a lower, normal, or higher probability of failure?

Conclusion

To learn more about comprehensive capital planning and improving operational reliability in data centers, download our new whitepaper Beyond Current State: Asset Evaluation for Better Capital Planning. You can also contact our team direct to learn more about asset planning at 1.877.427.2368, or email us at answers@ascentcorp.com.

Today’s supply chain issues and delays are a humble reminder to all data center project managers and critical facility managers that nothing can be taken for granted. Even prepandemic, the data center industry was pushing the time-to-market envelope with prefabricated assemblies and techniques for managing production around long-lead items.

But what about anticipating the project before it even happens? Like a scene out of the 2002 movie Minority Report, what if there were Precogs with the gift of clairvoyance that could simply let you know when it is time to order a cooling tower or another pump? In reality, we would argue that this feat can be managed with a solid protocol for capital planning, and without the need for any psychic gifts.

In our new white paper, “Beyond Current State: Asset Evaluation for Better Capital Planning,” we present the case for just such a protocol. Understanding the condition and criticality of your data center infrastructure is necessary for making the most informed capital-investment decisions, yet many operators are too buried in the day to day when it comes to being able to plan future growth or investment.

Particularly in the mission-critical industry, predictive spending is preferable to a break/fix mentality; furthermore, “Managing to Known Risks” is the key to uptime and reliability. Our new white paper includes a detailed methodology to help you better understand the operation of your facility beyond DCIM and other monitoring tools. This program outlines a systematic approach to management through asset-conditions reporting that optimizes reliability while prioritizing capital expenditures.

With our asset-intensive approach to understanding facilities, you are on your way to navigating supply chain issues.

Every data-center manager has a good understanding of the equipment that supports the operating environment. Major electrical and mechanical components such as generators and cooling towers are well known to them, and some may say that they know a little too much about their infrastructure: the good, the bad, and the ugly. But few managers—and particularly those with multiple facilities under their purview—could provide, off the top of their heads, any level of detail for less visible systems such as monitoring sensors and batteries (despite those items being just as critical to the operation).

If asked, “What is the capital plan for the facility for the next four years?” finding the right answer can prove difficult for most data center managers. The reality is that the process of creating an effective and accurate plan for capital projects, which often exist in critical environments that commonly include a mix of aging, but essential, systems, is no simple task.

How to prioritize the most critical items for replacement or upgrade, and when to do so, is the million-dollar question.

For more about beating the supply chain through better capital planning, download Beyond Current State: Asset Evaluation for Better Capital Planning. Contact our team at 1.877.427.2368 or email us at answers@ascentcorp.com.

This is the time of year when data center users are wrapping up 2021 budgets and planning maintenance projects. They face the challenge of prioritizing their most critical needs, developing budgets and maintenance schedules while adhering to equipment maintenance standards and following manufacturer recommendations.

With regards to electrical systems planning, it’s often seen that the multifaceted maintenance such as the 3-5 year preventative maintenance on switchboards, switchgear, transformers and panelboards, is deferred year after year. This postponement increases the risk that if something should fail, it becomes a major critical event, potentially a customer impacting issue, and ultimately, a personnel safety risk.

Why is this maintenance deferred? Principally, unlabeled or unidentified breakers create risk in transferring load throughout the system. Secondly, for facilities with aging equipment, the risk of component failure increases, replacement parts are harder to find, and repairs become costly. Lastly, even in a modern data center, extensive planning is required, ensuring correct procedures are in place, identifying necessary spare parts to have on hand in advance, and selecting the correct provider to guarantee the maintenance is successful and safe.

Additionally, hidden risks of skipping or deferring the Electrical Systems Maintenance include:

Where to begin? Electrical systems preventative maintenance work must be planned with the highest regard of critical load placement and encapsulate all available means of risk mitigation. This typically requires maintenance to be performed in a work window when the load can be transferred for an extended period of time, and usually with the help of ATS’s and STS’s. In addition, after-market digital upgrade options are available to help ensure performance and reliability of aging equipment.

Ensuring up-to-date and accurate electrical one-lines and plans, and operating proper switchgear and switchboard maintenance, is a critical component to your data center.

Connect with Ascent for assistance with electrical maintenance projects and to learn more about how we help customers facing these challenges.