We are planning to convert our subfloor data wiring mess to a structured overhead system. Part of the construction will involve drilling into the steel and concrete decking above the drop ceiling to install anchors for cable tray. This will generate lots of debris -- including fireproofing, steel chaff, concrete dust and ceiling tile bits -- raining down upon our active server racks. This will cause an epidemic of hardware failures, unless we can somehow prevent pollution of the server intake air.
Has anyone done this? Any recommendations? Thanks in advance!
How about enclosing your cold aisle, or if you don't have those, just enclose all of your server cabinets and cooling units with 8mil construction plastic. I saw this in a ASHRAE publication somewhere.
If you could seal up just your cold aisle that will help stop a lot of dust and such being pulled into the servers. The hot aisle should hopefully be able to push some of the dust away. It will be near impossible to stop all of it. Also according the ASHRAE document it looked like you'll see a big jump in your cooling efficiency during that time as well.
Do you use a cleaning company at all in your data center? Have them come in at different stages to clean out the data center and construction area, or atleast be on hand when things are done to do a real clean job on it.
They can do reports before and after on the particle count in the data center to show you how much stuck around.
The cleaning company should also have some really good ideas on how to keep the area clean and the servers from being clogged up during this work.
Make sure any contractors doing work use HEPA vacs while they are drilling or pulling stuff off. This might make things go slower and increase cost, but would be better than having to replace a server or 2 and the associated downtime.
Also make sure to have plenty of filters on hand for your CRAC units. I'm sure those will need to be changed out a few times during this work.
I hope your data center remodel went well! I've been working on a similar project for the last several months. I too am working to move our cabling to overhead cable trays; however, I have not yet implemented hot aisle / cold aisle. (The layout of the new cable trays will allow me to finally make the move).
Dave's suggestions are really good (I wish I'd had cold aisles I could have covered w/ plastic!). Here's a few things we did during my project . . .
(1) When drilling the concrete deck above the data center be sure that your contractor uses tools with built in suction to minimize the spewing of dust throughout the room.
(2) Better yet, they make a "gun" that can shoot anchors into your ceiling. We found that these made less dust and, more importantly, noise, than the drills did.
(3) Clean, clean, clean! (I'll be so glad when this project is done and my dust control problems go away!)
Maybe these ideas can help someone else undergoing a remodel. I'd be happy to hear about any other ideas people have (especially contact information for data center cleaning companies in or around Southern Wisconsin).
Thanks all for the thoughtful suggestions. The method we chose was to install 1/2" x 20" HVAC filter media on the inside face of each rack door. Despite the care taken by the contractors, a lot of dust and debris has been trapped by these filters and kept out of the equipment. Our local supplier is Grainger.
Data Clean Corporation is a worldwide data center cleaning company. The account representative for Southern Wisconsin is Mike King, 1-800-328-2256 x25.
The Data Clean reps will have some helpful advice on preventing contamination to your servers. As it was said in the previous post, it is soooooo important to clean during data center remodeling activities, not just after. Concrete dust, especially, is something you don't want in your server environment.
In addition to HEPA vacuums, be sure to use some contamination control mats to trap the dirt. Data Clean can also provide you with a HEPA vacuum and some contamination control mats.
Dust Control During Remodel?
