Sabey Data Centers’ Intergate.East facility in Seattle has been awarded one of the industry’s most prestigious designations of service quality and reliability — the Uptime Institute Stamp of Approval for Management & Operations.
This award is based on Uptime Institute’s independent, on-site assessment performed at Intergate.East late last year that outlines, prioritizes, and weighs behaviors necessary for data center owners and operators to achieve maximum uptime.
“Our mission is to function as a builder, owner and operator. Rather than rely on outsourced operators, we take full responsibility and operational authority to ensure 100% uptime. Reliability is paramount,” said Robert K. Rockwood, president, Sabey Data Centers.
Uptime Institute’s Management & Operations (M&O) certification is the industry “Gold Standard.” It measures and proves operational excellence. Uptime developed its M&O program based on 20 years of historical data compiled from hundreds of data center outages. By understanding what causes failures, the group built the de facto standard to implement proactive operational processes to avoid these causes.
The M&O Stamp of Approval provides assurance that data centers housing critical infrastructure functions have passed rigorous, third-party audits and conform to practices that deliver greater efficiency.
On-site Uptime auditors evaluate five specific areas:
- Staffing and Organization: Ensuring staff is organized/maintained to align with long-term objectives.
- Maintenance: Minimizing failure via preventative/predictive maintenance, vendor support, resources, and tracking.
- Training: Committing personnel to each policy, procedure and unique data center requirement.
- Planning, Coordination, and Management: Implementing/documenting programs focused on site and financial management policies, space/power/cooling capacity, and management.
- Operating Conditions: Aligning power and cooling for all IT equipment via consistent management of capacity components and setpoints.
In a letter accompanying the award to John Sasser, Sabey Data Centers senior vice president for Data Center Operations, R. Lee Kirby, President of the Uptime Institute, wrote, “Congratulations on this achievement. Adherence to the Management and Operations behaviors has been proven to minimize opportunities for human error – the number one cause of data center downtime.”
