Labeling, a worthy obsession
I’ve had people call me obsessive compulsive, anal retentive and other not so flattering names in my data center career, but when it came to managing a mission critical facility and ensuring continuous uptime, being a little controlling is a good thing.
One
of my more obsessive traits involved labeling.
Most
of you are aware of the importance of having labeled power whips in a raised
floor environment. But there are many
other things in a data center raised floor area that should also be labeled. Proper labeling can prove very helpful when
trying to locate infrastructure under the raised floor in a hurry.
Let
me share with you some of the areas where labeling really provides big
benefits, yet very few data centers actually implement.
Smoke
Detectors
If
you have smoke detectors under your raised floor I highly recommend adding some
type of label on the raised floor panel right above it. There is any number of ways to mark the
panel; we used a template to router a big red X with the detector number on
it. A large floor plan layout is put at
all the exit doors with the location of each detector on it. That way if a detector was in alarm, we knew
its exact location, and finding the right floor panel to pull was much easier
once it was labeled.
CRAC/CRAH
Water Supply and Return Valves
Labeling
your water supply and return valves to the CRAC/CRAH units can be a real time
saver in the event of a water leak.
Every second can mean gallons of water under your raised floor, which
can shut down your data center in a heartbeat.
We used a template to router a big blue V on each floor panel with a
water value under it. Each valve had a
brass tag indicating which A/C unit it fed and whether it was a supply or
return valve.
Electrical
Junction Boxes
If
you have any type of electrical junction boxes under your floor, you will want
to be able to locate them and also make sure no one puts any servers over
them. We used a template to router a big
blue E on each floor panel with an electrical junction box under it.
Using
Multiple Colored Floor Panels
Using
a different colored floor panel to create an egress route or pathway to the
exit doors was a great safety measure in the event of an emergency. It can get pretty overwhelming when you find yourself
in the middle of a large data center if a fire alarm goes off. We referred to it as “follow the yellow brick
road” to safety. We also would use
different colored tile around our PDU’s and CRAC/CRAH units to let everyone
know there was a code clearance requirement around certain electrical
equipment. Nothing could be left or
stored on any colored floor panels.
These
are just a few of the ways we manipulated and labeled our raised floor panels
to ensure that if an emergency presented itself, we were prepared to deal with
the problem as quickly as possible. For
us a little obsessive compulsive behavior paid off in 12 consecutive years of
continuous uptime.
Labeling has been very useful in my job, too. I had the floor panels colored to lead to the nearest exits and proved to be very helpful when we had an emergency.
ReplyDeleteRandy, I can’t agree more. With our data centers we always think of continuous uptime and energy savings, but protecting our greatest assets our people is the most important roll of our job as facility managers.
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