Hot summer weather can cause commercial HVAC systems cooling your building’s data centre to malfunction and shut down. At first, you might not even be aware of it. But, by the time you discover something has happened, it could be too late. Acknowledge the temperatures inside your building, and take the required measures to guard your data centre against overheating. Or, risk losing valuable time and money.
Summer Heat Dangers
One of the greatest dangers of summer heat is the potential for data loss. It can damage your company’s reputation if all of a sudden thousands of files get destroyed by something that could have been prevented. Because of this, you should keep your building’s computer room as cold as possible, primarily through the hottest days of the year. The heat will affect both your HVAC system and employees. The temperature becomes more of a concern the more prolonged the HVAC system needs to run. If you have not experienced problems so far, one way to avoid this issue is by making sure you arrange for timely preventative maintenance.
Preventative Maintenance
This is essential throughout the year, mainly if your business is based on data analysis and management. However, as previously indicated, maintenance becomes even more urgent during the summer. When you have support scheduled for regular intervals, you will be able to find and fix problems before they become unmanageable, like the potential for overheating.
Your commercial HVAC can overheat even with frequent inspections and maintenance. If this happens, you will need your HVAC maintenance professional to come as quickly as possible to repair the system to restore full functionality to your data centre. It can also help keep other related operational problems from getting worse.
Install Hot and Cold Aisles
You do not need to keep your data centre cold enough to keep meat fresh. Instead, focus on removing excessive hot air from the centre before it can recirculate. Arrange racks in rows so that the front faces a cold aisle while the back faces a hot aisle. Then, you can focus on removing heat from the hot aisles individually.
Implement Blanking Panels
Blocking unused racks not only looks better but also forces cold air to pass through your servers while preventing hot air from recirculating.
Keep Cables Organized
Airflow can become blocked from tangled wires and cause heat to build up.
Replace Outdated UPS Systems
Traditional online UPS systems should be replaced with modern energy-saving models to reduce heat output and increase efficiency. Some older systems even operate below full capacity.
Use Close-coupled Cooling
This type of system allows you to cool areas that most need it without lowering the entire room’s temperature. It also provides data centre managers to reconfigure cooling to accommodate overheating racks and new equipment swiftly.
By protecting your HVAC system from overheating problems, you can protect your business against lost time, revenue, and money because the repairs you need will likely not be extensive. The weather should not be the reason your company suffers a setback. Thinking ahead now can help you later on.