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Posted By Kath Tordoff
Our company's data centre is due its 5-yearly hard wire electrical testing and the varoius portable appliances within the data hall have also not been PAT tested in that time. We want to carry all of this out next year but we're under huge pressure;
a) not to carry this out at all
b) to put in a temporary power supply - meaning we still couldn't test portable kit within the data hall.
We're pushing for a full power down but this is likely to involve a 4-day outage so there is huge push-back from the business as this data centre provides the network for the company's UK and EMEA I.T. systems.
Am I on solid ground insisting this is done?
Does anyone out there have experience of testing on this sort of scale - in particular data centres?
Any advice would be appreciated !
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Posted By Paul Leadbetter
Kath
Is there no backup centre that can be used while the main one is taken down for the inspection and testing?
Paul
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Posted By Kath Tordoff
That was my first question but apparently our 2nd data centre is only geared up to back up "some" of the original one ! Presumably a question of economics at the time it was commissioned.....
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Posted By A Campbell
4 day outage sounds excessive... do they not test a percentage of fixed wire systems these days at the 5 yearly?
portable... well I wouldn't expect them to shut down for that!
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Posted By Ron Hunter
If this system is so business critical, how come it doesn't already have a back-up power supply?
4 days seems way OTT for fixed wiring, but as period for this will have been set by a competent person (electrician) and as your insurers will not perhaps be best pleased if you don't, it's hard to argue against the fixed wiring test and inspection.
PAT testing of data centre kit I could argue isn't required at all. Where's the risk?
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Posted By David Rodger
I have been involved in quite a few data centres over the years and the same argument comes up all the time, we cannot shut down. I have no easy answer for you but in the past I have pointed out to the business and IT guys that if an electrical fault did occur then the consequential damages would be far greater than shutting down for maintenance. Things to consider are planning testing every year (shorter outages) rather than wait for five years to carry it out all at one time. If a major shutdown has to be done to carry out testing make sure your electrical people have enough equipment (we had a situation where the test equipment was worked so hard that it started overheating and batteries started to fail, not good news at 3 in the morning). As to portable testing it may be worth considering changing leads rather than test them, this can reduce time and cost. Best of luck.
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Posted By Nick Andrews
Like David I have been involved in fixed wiring examination and testing and this area always raises an eyebrow.
As I'm usually there to get the job done I keep my mouth firmly shut, but one question I always want to ask is "what happens if the system were going to work on suddenly becomes unavailable due to a fault?". How would you deal with it then.
You could look a little broader at this and tie the down time into a contingency/emergency planning exercise, actually doing a dummy run on such an occurrence occurring.
To sell the test to the powers that be you could cite that once armed with the inspection report and test results,it is a relatively simple process to rate the probability of such a fault developing in the future.
Good luck
Nick
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Posted By Kath Tordoff
Thanks for your comments guys - this should all come in really helpful during the next stage of the "argument" !
Kath
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