How data centers can prepare for a storm

Multiple strategies can be deployed to protect data centers from gale-force winds and torrential rainfall.

By Donna Donnowitz
December 11, 2014
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Data centers situated on the East and West Coasts must always be wary of the powerful storm winds that are an inevitable part of life near the sea. Storms are unpredictable, but can have lasting negative impacts if a data center is hit unawares by powerful weather phenomena. Thankfully, there are many strategies that IT teams can deploy in order to keep their data centers safe from gale-force winds and torrential rain fall.

Prioritize your people
Data Center Knowledge noted that in any storm preparation strategy, the safety of personnel must come before the well-being of hardware. In locations where storm warnings are frequent, it may be prudent for the IT staff to keep a cache of supplies inside the data center just in case employees become stranded inside. Once the storm preparation plan is finalized, be sure to provide a detailed explanation for each employee so everyone in the building knows what to do in case of an emergency.

Utilize multiple back-ups
IT staffs breathe a sigh of relief when pertinent data is saved because it had already been backed up. There are more ways to transfer vital data from one location to the other than ever before, so IT teams have no excuse if a sudden storm causes permanent data loss in their facility. Cloud storage is a popular method of storing massive amounts of data and this technology is used commonly by professional disaster recovery companies. Employees can utilize remote console servers to share important files on the fly as well.

Prepare for the worst-case scenario
With storms come heavy rains, and with heavy rains comes flooding. An unyielding downpour could put a data center at risk of taking on water and risking serious damage to the facility's equipment. That's why IT staff should always consider flooding a possibility if they work in a facility near the ocean and prepare accordingly. One way to minimize the potential damage caused by storm flooding is to eliminate the breaches in the building that might allow in extra water. Any breach or crack in the building's floors, ceilings and walls should be repaired to make sure water stays out of the data center. Likewise, The Data Center Journal warns IT teams against situating racks near windows. Flying debris is common during a storm and could come crashing in on multiple servers unless the equipment is moved away.

Perle's wide range of 1 to 48 port Perle Console Servers provide data center managers and network administrators with secure remote management of any device with a serial console port. Plus, they are the only truly fault tolerant Console Servers on the market with the advanced security functionality needed to easily perform secure remote data center management and out-of-band management of IT assets from anywhere in the world.

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