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Why Your Data Center Needs RFID

Do you have an extra $336,000 on hand?

According to one study, the average cost of data center downtime was approximately $5,600 per minute or $336,000 per hour.  In other words, it’s about $93 every second!

IT data centers are the powerhouse to virtually everything you see online. Data center facilities are highly secure and are usually located in areas where natural disasters rarely occur. Some data centers are even underground to prevent any of the elements from getting inside.

While your data center is highly protected from the outside, what are you doing to protect your facility from internal factors? Data center downtime can have severe financial and legal obligations because you’re dealing with corporate data, intellectual property, and maintaining strict service level agreements. Plus, as the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to expand to all facets of our lives, uptime and connectivity are more important now than ever.

Reasons for Data Center Downtime

According to one source, data center failures were due to the following reasons:

29% – System Failure
24% – Human Error
15% – Water/Heat or Air Conditioning Failure

As we can see, the most common issues are all internal related and not due to external influences. In addition, most would agree these issues are preventable. But how?

Meet RFID – innovative technology that can easily solve the most common reasons for data center downtime. Here’s how RFID can help:

RFID Asset Tracking

Not too long ago we worked with a data center to implement an RFID asset tracking solution. The issue was that their staff was spending a lot of time tracking various assets that were installed across their data center. The result? We were able to take what previously was a four-week manual process down to three days! You can read more about their story here.

RFID asset tracking gives you immediate insight into where your equipment is at all times which can prevent human error and misplaced equipment.

Check out the graphic below that illustrates the amount of time it takes to track IT assets manually vs. using RFID technology. You can read the full case study here.

RFID Equipment Performance Monitoring

Is your equipment on the brink of a major failure? RFID can be used for more than tracking your assets; it can monitor the performance of your equipment to ensure data is secure and your devices are running normally. RFID can also be used for product lifecycle management of IT assets to ensure older, outdated equipment is being refreshed before its end of life.

RFID Temperature & Environment Monitoring

90 degrees is a toasty but pleasant temperature for spending the afternoon at the beach or by the pool. But, it can spell disaster inside of a data center.

Wireless RFID sensor tags can be placed on virtually any surface to give you instant temperature and humidity readings. For data centers, this is important because although you already monitor temperatures in your data center, RFID temperature and humidity can pinpoint readings to the exact cage or area of the building that may have an issue. RFID monitoring can also be customized for you and your staff to receive instant alerts when somethings not right.

How to Implement RFID in Your Data Center

If you’d rather not take a chance of losing $336,000 per hour because of a data center outage, it may be a good time to consider how RFID can help. With AB&R®, we offer a three-phased approach to implementing any solution that we offer. We’re not a one-size-fits-all company; we customize every solution for our customers to make sure it works every time.

If you’re ready to learn more, fill out the form below to let us know!

Trivia Answer: True.

References:

https://serverlift.com/tech-lift/data-center-downtime/

Shocking Statistics About Data Center Downtime