Take a Walk - In your Data Center

Every Data Center manager should assign a on-site staff member to walk the data center daily to check for problems. This IT guy should be checking for things like:

• Those pesky flashing amber lights on raid subsystem and in host machines
• The environment - high temp, hot spots, humidity
• Audible alarms
• UPS systems - move your hand over battery units to sense heat that may indicate a failing or overheating battery
• Listen for noisy fans or hard drives that may indicate a impending failure

This proactive approach to Data Center management can help to head off disaster.