A company’s data center can be the heart and soul of an entire enterprise. It is involved in nearly all aspects of the business and encompasses all of the digital assets, customer interactions and transactions that pass through a business on a daily basis. No company can afford to face a catastrophic outage in their data center.
That's why Piedmont Service Group provides mission critical HVAC services to commercial data centers throughout Virginia and the Carolinas. The states have invested heavily in infrastructure to provide an appealing location for new data center builds and expansions, and our goal is to ensure these locations continue operating at their highest efficiency and performance.
Here are three specific reasons why mission critical HVAC services are vital for data centers today:
1. Reliability - Protection Against Downtime
Service continuity and system reliability are essential. Downtime is not an option for data centers in today's ultra-connected digital business environment. As an extreme example, when e-retailer mega site, Amazon.com, went down for just 20 minutes last March, they estimate it cost them about $3.75 million!
Of course, most companies won't lose quite that much if their data center goes down, but the cost of even a minor outage can quickly add up, between lost or corrupted data, missed sales, lost opportunities, and broken communications. If it becomes any kind of trend, the company's entire reputation can be jeopardized.
Learn more about operational assessments that keep your facilities running at their maximum efficiency.
A data center's HVAC system is integral to keeping their servers and other equipment performing efficiently. Especially since extremes in temperature or humidity caused by faulty or underperforming HVAC can hinder performance, or even irreparably damage sensitive equipment. Mission critical services include highly specialized preventive maintenance, monitoring of critical HVAC system components, and a strategic replacement schedule designed to result in zero downtime.
2. Support Flexibility
Data centers must quickly adapt to varying usage patterns, additional server load, and unexpected spikes. After all, when that adorable cat video you uploaded last night goes viral, someone has to pick up the surge in activity without causing YouTube to crash.
While the server and networking technology employed at modern data centers must be continually monitored and upgraded to ensure they remain as flexible as possible, the HVAC equipment that supports their functionality is equally tasked with flexibly, adapting to unexpected changes in usage.
Mission critical HVAC services support this flexibility by ensuring that optimal equipment is selected for each unique data center's needs and that all components are reliably maintained with an eye on flexible usage. If and when additional or upgraded equipment is required to help handle continued growth, the installation also falls under mission critical services.
3. Deliver Energy Efficiency
Incredibly, data centers already account for a full 7% of all the energy usage in the United States, and their footprint is growing rapidly every day. With that much energy being consumed, data centers must be concerned about energy efficiency, both from a cost containment perspective and for environmental reasons.
Mission critical HVAC services that are focused on energy efficiency can help data center operators control energy costs, reduce the load on utility providers, and lessen the data center's impact on the environment, all through strategic installation, maintenance, and monitoring of HVAC equipment at the data center.
If you're responsible for facility management at a data center in North Carolina, South Carolina or Virginia, contact us to discuss how our mission critical HVAC services can benefit you. Or, download our ebook to better understand the ROI of HVAC maintenance.
