Event Recap
RECAP | ROUNDTABLE | COVID-19 precautions: Lessons learned
Scott Good, UI senior consultant, and Amber Villegas-Williamson, UI consultant, joined this Inside Track roundtable examining the effectiveness of attendee responses to COVID-19. During this roundtable, data center owners/operators evaluated the effectiveness of the precautions they put in place and also shared whether they will be making long-term or permanent changes to operations and procedures as a result of their experiences. The attendees had an interesting discussion as they opened up about their challenges, lessons learned, and what they see as potentially the new normal.
Challenges
• Safety of personnel continues to be a challenge as data center teams continue to work with hard deadlines from their IT customers. Flexibility, particularly in staffing, is key to meeting these deadlines and objectives.
• Availability of staff as data center teams deal with red/blue team approaches, as well as COVID-19 contraction in some cases. One attendee indicated were notified of an active case yesterday (not while on site), which meant they had to move and adjust staff resources.
• If you operate a mixed-use data center facility, this creates a challenge as policies will need to be different for the data center verses the office space.
• Keeping up with government guidelines because they have been changing so quickly.
• Determining the appropriate cleaning requirements, and keeping up with cleaning, for data halls and MEP spaces.
• Business financial concerns and issues causing projects and other Capex and OpEx to be deferred at the data center operations level.
Scott Good indicated what we are hearing as a challenge is greater emphasis on data center entry points to control site access. Also, operators are having to adjust standard site policies to reflect the changing environment. We are seeing impacts to staff, as was mentioned above, as well as impacts to the supply chain, which has impacted IT installations in some cases.
Lessons Learned
• Having a staffing redundancy plan to combat the pandemic proved to be vital to success. The plan needs to be clear, fully developed, with more of a lights-out approach. The ability to adjust to the red/blue team scenario was a key item. Another attendee indicated they ran into a scenario where they had a positive case onsite. They immediately followed their protocol to isolate the shift.
• Teams are learning how to work with a smaller workforce onsite, smaller teams in the room than they normally would have. This could lead to greater efficiencies.
• Do not underestimate; anticipate and plan for the worst case scenario.
• The necessity to re-organize and adjust procedures was a key lesson learned.
• The team's ability to actually operate the data center under pressure. One attendee indicated they proved to themselves they can operate in this environment.
New Normal
• Staffing makeup and strategy after the pandemic appears to be an open question not yet clear. On a temporary basis, adjusting staff to red/blue teams was necessary and worked, but it also added a lot of pressure and stress to the teams. One attendee indicated they went back to their normal staffing after about 5-6 weeks.
• Less people allowed and coming onsite was stated as a new normal. Strict onsite access procedures with temperature checks and completing health forms being the norm.
• Reduction in travel between sites and locations.
• Reliance on the network for remote and video meetings and interaction. The expectation is after the pandemic this will continue.
Scott Good indicated deferring maintenance has become more prevalent during the pandemic as tasks backup. Additional time is needed for internal staff and outside vendors to check in, get setup, and clean tools, as an example. Companies are also running into IT freeze periods that they normally would have planned around.
The question was asked about whether more reliance on remote monitoring and automation will become part of the new normal. Amber Villegas-Williamson relayed findings from the recent UI Annual Data center Industry survey where the indication is based on responses that reliance will increase. The survey also indicates that companies are expecting the need for resiliency to increase as well. One of the attendees indicated he can see an increase in remote monitoring and automation, but no rush to increase MEP resiliency in his targeted Tier III environment.
Challenges
• Safety of personnel continues to be a challenge as data center teams continue to work with hard deadlines from their IT customers. Flexibility, particularly in staffing, is key to meeting these deadlines and objectives.
• Availability of staff as data center teams deal with red/blue team approaches, as well as COVID-19 contraction in some cases. One attendee indicated were notified of an active case yesterday (not while on site), which meant they had to move and adjust staff resources.
• If you operate a mixed-use data center facility, this creates a challenge as policies will need to be different for the data center verses the office space.
• Keeping up with government guidelines because they have been changing so quickly.
• Determining the appropriate cleaning requirements, and keeping up with cleaning, for data halls and MEP spaces.
• Business financial concerns and issues causing projects and other Capex and OpEx to be deferred at the data center operations level.
Scott Good indicated what we are hearing as a challenge is greater emphasis on data center entry points to control site access. Also, operators are having to adjust standard site policies to reflect the changing environment. We are seeing impacts to staff, as was mentioned above, as well as impacts to the supply chain, which has impacted IT installations in some cases.
Lessons Learned
• Having a staffing redundancy plan to combat the pandemic proved to be vital to success. The plan needs to be clear, fully developed, with more of a lights-out approach. The ability to adjust to the red/blue team scenario was a key item. Another attendee indicated they ran into a scenario where they had a positive case onsite. They immediately followed their protocol to isolate the shift.
• Teams are learning how to work with a smaller workforce onsite, smaller teams in the room than they normally would have. This could lead to greater efficiencies.
• Do not underestimate; anticipate and plan for the worst case scenario.
• The necessity to re-organize and adjust procedures was a key lesson learned.
• The team's ability to actually operate the data center under pressure. One attendee indicated they proved to themselves they can operate in this environment.
New Normal
• Staffing makeup and strategy after the pandemic appears to be an open question not yet clear. On a temporary basis, adjusting staff to red/blue teams was necessary and worked, but it also added a lot of pressure and stress to the teams. One attendee indicated they went back to their normal staffing after about 5-6 weeks.
• Less people allowed and coming onsite was stated as a new normal. Strict onsite access procedures with temperature checks and completing health forms being the norm.
• Reduction in travel between sites and locations.
• Reliance on the network for remote and video meetings and interaction. The expectation is after the pandemic this will continue.
Scott Good indicated deferring maintenance has become more prevalent during the pandemic as tasks backup. Additional time is needed for internal staff and outside vendors to check in, get setup, and clean tools, as an example. Companies are also running into IT freeze periods that they normally would have planned around.
The question was asked about whether more reliance on remote monitoring and automation will become part of the new normal. Amber Villegas-Williamson relayed findings from the recent UI Annual Data center Industry survey where the indication is based on responses that reliance will increase. The survey also indicates that companies are expecting the need for resiliency to increase as well. One of the attendees indicated he can see an increase in remote monitoring and automation, but no rush to increase MEP resiliency in his targeted Tier III environment.
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