The SOS program is intended to ensure long-term data center uptime as defined under the Uptime Institute’s new Operational Sustainability Standard for Data Center Operations and in accordance with the organization’s Tier Classification System. The SOS effort offers a one-stop-shop approach to enable clients to seamlessly deal with the human error risks intrinsic to operations and maintenance of mission critical facilities.
“Our Sustainable Operations Services provide solutions to the increasingly complex operations, maintenance, and energy efficiency needs of mission critical facilities,” explains Kelly Decker, president of Primary Integration. “The services are designed to guide critical facilities operators in the development of a program that provides operating guidelines, mitigates the risks involved with human error, and supports ongoing daily operations.”
With an SOS program, PI will evaluate the operations, maintenance, testing and training required to achieve the data center mission as well as its specific service level agreements (SLAs) and will implement corrective actions to achieve optimum results. It will create prioritized behaviors that manage the risks associated with data center operators doing their job within critical facilities, where unscheduled down time cannot be tolerated.
Broken down into three primary components-Operations, Maintenance, Energy-the SOS program encompasses a series of specific analytical and proactive elements:
- Operations: a comprehensive audit of current staffing, standards and protocols, and performance metrics; process and procedure documentation, including critical infrastructure, monitoring and controls, and safety/security operations and protocols; and standards development, including emergency operations, disaster recovery and response, and escalation policies. Other program elements might involve staff training, evaluation, and recruitment; SLA and key performance indicator assessment; hazardous material and waste management analysis; and organizational structure and record keeping evaluation.
- Maintenance: an initial analysis of all maintenance requirements for critical systems, including safety best practices, compliance with manufacturer’s recommendations, spare parts inventory and storage, equipment history, warranty records, and commissioning reports; development of complete maintenance procedures, including infrastructure refresh standards, training, vendor management, and key issuing/checkout policies; and risk management/reliability assurance, including single point of failure analysis, design/peer review, forensic investigations, and business continuity/disaster recovery planning.
- Energy: data center energy commissioning focusing on benchmarking facility power usage effectiveness through computational fluid dynamics modeling, and IT analysis; energy saving program development, with plant optimization, power network analysis and tuning, and evaluation of renewable energy opportunities; development of energy usage tracking metrics; and energy commissioning program implementation, to ensure long-term efficiencies.
