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Sidestepping Best Practices

We all believe in best practices, although we sometime end up not following them. Maybe it’s a lack of budget so you end up buying consumer-grade equipment or maybe it’s a short time-line to get something operational. Once the solution is in-place it becomes invisible and may continue to exist for years without attracting critical scrutiny. Take a look around to see if you have any of these disaster- waiting-to-happen situations in your workplace.

By Peter Aggus

Peter, as an engineer & technology management consultant, has developed innovative & cost-effective solutions for clients in many industries.

Due Diligence

Most IT equipment needs special protection—like operation in a clean cool environment and not being crashed-into or bumped. We sometimes forget this when we sidestep best practices. Here are some examples of what we’ve found during IT assessments.

Room Sharing

Others often use ‘spare space’ in IT rooms as temporary storage for a few boxes. Stacks of storage boxes can topple, a ladder can take out overhead wiring, a mop handle can catch in loose patch panel cables or bump the wrong spot and power down some equipment.

The worst case that we’ve seen is a small server stored on the floor under someone’s desk. This guarantees dust and regular bumping from feet, the office chair and the vacuum cleaner.

Mounting

Best practices tell us how to mount equipment but we sometimes do something on a temporary basis that we plan to come back to later. Later often becomes never. We’ve seen a network switch balanced on a cardboard box on top of a storage cabinet, just waiting to be vibrated loose and drop onto someone’s head. We’ve seen a server mounted inside a cupboard—an overheating problem just waiting to happen.

Water

Water (or coffee) damage can be a common cause of system outages. Equipment may be next to drinks waiting to spill. The room may be underneath a bathroom or janitor’s closet which are known to flood; or may be in a flood-prone basement.

We know of a case that sounded like it should be safe but wasn’t. In the Calgary flood of 2013, a building’s backup power system failed. The generator was fine, and safely located on the roof, but the basement power distribution panels were under water.

Power

Power cables are a particular risk. They often drape onto the floor between the outlet and the equipment. This can turn into a Worksafe tripping incident and unplugged equipment. Plugging the cord back in is easy but some equipment, like servers, do not restart that easily. A reboot followed by a rebuild of important system files may cause your office to be down for possibly a couple of hours or more.

We have seen the same issue caused by cleaners unplugging critical equipment to do the vacuuming.

I was in a computer room once where the manager came in to berate one of the ops staff. In a temper he flung a ring binder onto the table and it slid across and hit the wall, right on the Emergency Shutoff, which took the call centre offline for 90 minutes.

Take a Walkabout

You can find things like this for yourself. If you’d like a checklist, email me and ask.

If you’d like to comment on this article or explore these ideas further, contact me at .

This article was published in the November 2020 edition of The TMC Advisor
- ISSN 2369-663X Volume:7 Issue:8

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