I can’t stress enough the importance of treating your technology and equipment properly. While we recommend that our clients always have equipment that’s within warranty, when you aren’t taking proper care of it or are neglecting it in certain ways, it can absolutely fail sooner. Your server is your lifeline. It’s where you store all your important documents and data. All of the stuff that you work so hard on is stored on your server. It’s the center of your network. When your server fails, work comes to a halt. Server failures are one of the worst things that can happen to your network and can not only result in some downtime, but depending on the state of your backups, can also cause you to lose data. Here are a few things you can do to reduce your risk of server failure:
- Keep it cool.
Keeping your server cool is extremely important to prolonging its life and ensuring that it runs efficiently. Generally, it’s best to keep it below 76 degrees and above 55 degrees. While some data suggests that it is okay to raise the temperature up to 78 degrees, keep in mind that in Florida we have extremely hot days and if your air conditioning unit fails, your office can quickly reach temperatures above 78 degrees (and into the 90’s) within minutes or hours. We highly recommend a temperature of 68-70 degrees, particularly during the summer months. You can read more about the risks and rewards of raising your temperature inside your server room here. - Keep it clean.
Dust, debris and other particles when present inside your server room can quickly cause issues with your server. This is part of the reason it’s so important to keep your server room clean and dust your servers regularly, since the fans can suck the dust particles inside the machine and potentially cause fires or inhibit the operational efficiency of the server. - Make sure your server is the right size.
As your organization grows and you keep the same server, the demand and load on that server increases. More and more data being added constantly as well as multiple users on a server can mean shortening the life of your server. You should plan your server upgrades as you grow and make sure that your server is well-suited for your growth and expansion. While it may save in the short term, operating on a server that is too small for the size of your business can mean shortening the lifespan and reliability of that server and causing network slowness, downtime and even lost data. - Stabilize power to your server.
Stabilizing the power to your server means installing UPS (uninterruptable power supplies) battery back ups in your server room. You want to make sure that no matter what happens, your server is up and running. Stabilizing power ensures that’s your server will not be impacted by surges or voltage variations in your power supply to the unit. Power outages and surges are extremely hard on your equipment, so managing power with a UPS is very important.
Server failure can be a catastrophic incident. Make sure that you’re being as proactive as possible by keeping your server cool, keeping it clean, not overloading it and managing the power carefully. With some diligence you can avoid your server failing before your warranty is out and avoid data loss or downtime as a result of a server failure.
