Cleaning your data centre regularly is essential in lowering the risk of system failures, server issues, and unscheduled downtime occurrence. Dust, debris and dirt build-up damage mission-critical equipment; keeping the environment tidy not only improves system performance but is essential for health and safety as an untidy data centre can pose fire risks as well.
Maintenance of a data centre has always been key, but with the pandemic sweeping through our nation's schools and offices, ensuring cleanliness has never been more critical. Covid virus is transmitted two ways - through respiratory particles and touching contaminated surfaces - so ensuring regular touchpoint and surface cleaning reduces risks of transmission so staff members remain healthy without needing to isolate themselves.
Your data center should be the unsung hero of your business - working quietly behind the scenes while supporting growth and success for your operations. But to make this happen, you need to take care in keeping it clean and hygienic; following industry best practices for cleaning ensures it functions safely and effectively.
Data Center Best Practises
Preventative measures are the key to keeping a data centre clean, and employees must not consume food or drinks while inside it, use gentle chemicals when cleaning, and store office supplies separately from one another.
To maintain a sterile data centre environment, it's essential that any general workplace activities take place outside the room and keep its door closed except when entering or leaving. Doing this will reduce any chance of contamination in your data centre and keep its staff safe.
As part of this guidance, data centre cleaning offers four essential best practices that should be adhered to:
Floor Cleaning
When cleaning the flooring of a data centre maintenance, a specialised ESD vacuum equipped with HEPA filters should be used for floor cleaning. This device ensures that even microscopic particles of dust are picked up by the vacuum. After using it to cover all areas of flooring, anti-static rags, non-conductive staticide and PVA mop should then be used to wipe down and polish each floor area thoroughly.
Wiping down the flooring with these tools ensures that any residual dust, dirt, grime and any other contaminants are eliminated from your data centre's floor surface. Depending on its layout, this may need to be repeated several times until all debris have been cleared away. When cleaning floors it is essential that only minimal amounts of liquid be used since overusing fluid could result in equipment being damaged when seepage seeps through floor panels.
Surface Cleaning
Your data centre contains various surfaces, which all need vacuuming and wiping down in order to remove dust, dirt, and debris. Air conditioners, cabinets, equipment - such as air conditioning units or equipment racks - should all be given attention during this step so there is no lingering debris that could cause long-term damage to them or nearby server cabinets. During this stage you should use HEPA-filtered vacuums before wiping down with anti-static cleaning solution and leaving all accessible areas spotlessly clean.
Care must be taken when cleaning your data centre cleaning services to handle valuable equipment with care, as any damage could lead to costly repairs and unplanned downtime if critical operational equipment is affected. Touchpoint cleanings must also be conducted regularly in order to prevent the buildup of infectious coronavirus droplets.
Cleaning of your data centre's tape library should ideally be handled by someone from its information system development (ISD) department. Each slot must be cleaned and vacuumed carefully while an ISD team member ensures all tape components are handled carefully during this process and restored back into their proper locations once complete.
Below Floor and Plenum Cleaning
Beneath the floors in your energy centre cleaning services lies the subfloor plenum space, an often unseen but essential area that needs to be kept clean as part of its routine maintenance routine. Access is easily achieved by carefully unplugging and lifting individual floor panels at a time - any more removals could cause instability and could potentially overheat mission-critical equipment, leading to its malfunction or overheating altogether.
Cleaners must wipe down surfaces with microfibre wipes or ESD wipes made from electrostatic discharge (ESD) material to clean surfaces thoroughly and safely. Once completed, restore floor panels back to their previous positions before wiping with staticide chemical solution for ultimate cleanliness.