To ensure your optimal personal health, it just makes sense to visit your doctor on a regular basis. The same wisdom applies to Data Center management: you need to regularly test the multiple factors impacting overall DC performance and diagnose and remedy any problem areas that are found.

In order to allay any health concerns, DC Managers need to look across multiple disciplines affecting their Data Centers:

What IT equipment sits in your Data Center, and is it up to date?
How is the facility space controlled and how long have you existed within that space?
What are the true capacities and redundancies of support systems (such as power and cooling)?

Medtronic, for example, did a recent health check-up on their Data Center to better know how to plan their growth. They found that they had already exceeded redundancy capacities by 20 percent and therefore needed an electrical update before proceeding. An ounce of prevention saved them money as well as headaches down the road.

Lawson Software’s DC space initially appeared to be 79 percent filled. But a check-up revealed they were actually at only 61 percent capacity and had room to place additional equipment. Lawson found that doing a check-up every six months keeps their growth manageable and their Data Center in peak condition.

So what are the vital signs to test during a DC check-up? When our clients find themselves running out of space, we first backtrack and ask “Why?”, “When?”, and “How?” to determine if there is justification for building on to their DC. Then we benchmark key statistics at regular intervals to do custom trending forecasts and to determine true growth needs.

N’compass health check-ups also address across-the-board questions such as:

Small hardware continues to shrink, so why is it more and more common for DCs to run out of space?
When large consolidation projects are implemented a DC may immediately benefit, but how is its long-term well-being impacted?
What are the effects of software virtualization on DC operations?

As DC space is used by more servers; as business demands on IT provide additional applications for more uses; as more clustering increases hardware reliability but also adds to space usage, Data Center Managers need to have more point-in-time health information to determine how to optimize their resources. So it makes sense to graph UPS over time, comparing which areas need the most immediate attention and funding.

Just as an M.D. would interview a first-time patient, N’compass asks comprehensive questions to determine a client’s DC needs:

What is your current space load—UPS, power distribution, support equipment—and how is it used?
With your current footprint, how much more equipment can you put on your valuable DC floor space?
What is your future DC capacity and where would you place additional cooling units if needed?
What is your power capacity with regard to distribution units, UPS and circuit capacity? Is your power capacity being quantified year after year?
What is your circuit temperature? (Cooling capacities are often robbed by growth and surpass the recommended N+1 redundancy equation.)
What is the ratio of your redundancy element to your UPS capacity? (If one system failed, would another take up a full 100% of the load?)

One client with a sizable UPS capacity recently decided to enhance its power distribution. They were about to cut a Purchase Order for $1.2 Million of new hardware when their Data Center Manager wisely asked if their DC could handle such an increase. The answer was a definitive “No:” the distribution within their DC was already almost at capacity. New circuit breakers were needed at the least to handle the new load. Anticipating this need before buying expensive new hardware was a step that could have easily been overlooked. A dose of preventive medicine made all the difference.

An important thing to take into consideration when assessing the health of a DC is temperature. Fevers are a concern as heat loads rise and equipment is more concentrated. Point loads are now often at 80, 100, or 125 watts per square foot without N+1 redundancy or the necessary cooling reliability. This is just one scenario where having your vital signs regularly checked will inform you when you are nearing capacity and therefore may help prevent a coronary outage.

Physical security goes hand in hand with physical health. A DC check-up needs to include an examination of the security of your building and support spaces so you know that your Data Center is safely protected. Many people pass in and out of the typical Data Center, so review processes need to be in place to make sure that installations have been done correctly.

Operational procedures during a power outage or environmental emergency also need to be reviewed. For example, reliability documentation and clear-cut, step-by-step instructions for employees must be in place before a crisis occurs. After a fire alarm went off at a regional hospital, a DC employee pushed what he thought was a reset button. Instead he had hit the emergency power off switch which resulted in a DC failure. It took 6 hours to diagnose the problem and another 8 hours to recover. Proper training would have prevented this costly accident. When physical security issues arise, DC managers are responsible for identifying the cause and core of the problem and annotating how progress is being made to resolve them.

Data Center reliability is dependent on the state of health of not only its facilities and equipment but also its people and processes. All components work together in a synergistic blend to meet efficiency requirements and business demands. Acquiring and maintaining a vibrant state of DC health is more easily achieved when an ounce or two of preventive medicine is used.

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Keith Meierhofer is a Founding Partner of N’compass, a Minneapolis-based regional consulting firm specializing in telecommunications and technology systems design, maintenance solution services, and optimization. Meierhofer can be reached at kmeierhofer@ncompass-inc.com.

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