How safe is your data centre? A full populated 42U cabinet is 2.2 metres tall and IT servers can be 30kg. Would you lift the equivalent of half a teenager above your head without putting some kind of measures in place to protect yourself? Would you ask anyone else to do it for that matter? Health and Safety in the UK has become an area that businesses have to look at more and more carefully to protect their staff, their equipment, and themselves.
Data centres are dangerous places with high density power. Raised floors left open, leaving half a metre deep hole in the floor, are equally dangerous. In fact, there is virtually a trip hazard at every corner.
Do your staff know what to do in case of electric shock? Do your staff know how to lift a floor tile correctly? Is protective footwear used? How many times are removed floor tiles left at the side of of a gaping hole in the floor? Not only causing a trip a hazard, but a trip into the newly created floor void.
In 2007 35.3 in every 100,000 workers in the UK had a slip or trip injury at work. In an ideal world you would always have two people doing every physical job to minimise risk and strain but is this a practical measure?
What about lone working? Do you have man down alarms for lone workers? Do you allow lone working out of business hours?
Data centres are dangerous environments and they are relatively new to the employment world. HSE does cover working in them, but at the moment it seems that not enough data centre managers know their responsibilities as well as they should.
Migration Solutions are experienced data centre operators with a number staff working in a range of facilities in the UK. Migration Solutions also offers vendor independent consultancy and data centre migration.
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