29% of Data Centre outages are caused by thermal issues

Data Centre thermal risk experts at EkkoSense are offering a free, no obligation, initial audit service to help Data Centre and IT Managers assess the threat of outages caused by thermal issues to their Data Centre – and understand the methodologies to remove this risk.

According to James Kirkwood, Head of Services at EkkoSense: “Data Centres underpin the UK’s Economy and provide critical infrastructure to organisations across all sectors - any outage will have a significant brand and bottom line impact. Data Centre Managers are considered responsible for mitigating risk, whilst squeezing as much capacity out of their facility as possible and cutting costs.

With thermal issues now accounting for 29% of unplanned Data Centre outages – this is an area that has to be a priority – particularly as this risk is entirely preventable and easily eradicated without having to invest in large scale plant replacement. The Data Centre configuration has to be analysed holistically to ensure all the cooling assets are cooperating at peak efficiency. The starting point is to have an accurate view of the thermal dynamics – we’re not talking about simulation – which can be useful in designing a Data Centre - but we deliver an accurate view of what is actually happening within every square foot of the Data Centre.

Truly vendor-independent insight into thermal management is rare, and that’s why we’ve launched this free initial audit service to provide Data Centre Managers with the re-assurance they need about their own specific configurations. We can then provide initial insight and advice on how to reduce risk, recover capacity and even save energy for them.”

The EkkoSense Thermal Risk Assessment audit will be available for the next 3 months. EkkoSense audits are the first step for the EkkoSense engineering team undertaking a unique performance benchmarking and testing service. The in-house EkkoSense engineering team will deliver performance improvements to maximise the efficiency of an organisation’s existing cooling estate.

Applying a more comprehensive EkkoSense thermal and airflow management regime will remove the thermal risks, will equip a Data Centre for increasing capacity (IT expansion), and typically save between 20-30% cooling energy with an ROI achievable under one year.

EkkoSense recently optimised the cooling environment at the European Data Centre of a leading global financial organisation, with the following results:

32% reduction in cooling energy
PUE reduced from 1.9 to 1.6
Payback on investment within less than 6 months
All hot and cold spots removed, ensuring all racks perform within ASHRAE temperature guidelines
Cooling Plant and floor grille airflows optimised to reduce the amount of cooling required
Operational risk reduced by completing cooling performance and ‘N+’ cooling resilience testing