When it comes to securing your business network, you are likely to guard against virus attacks, data breach and other cyber threats. While these are the more common threats that you should defend against, no number of firewalls can avert the physical dangers that may be lurking in your building right now.

These threats can cause damages to equipment, disrupt hardware and impede operations to a great degree. More importantly, many companies often tend to overlook these risks when it comes to securing their server rooms.

Stated below are five pressing server room problems that you should recognise and take necessary measures to avert:

1. Excessive temperature

For your business’s server room, the ideal temperature should ideally range between 20-24 degree Celsius. However, the excess heat that hardware generate along with the typically cramped rooms, can quickly shoot up the temperature, causing it to hit critical levels.

Overheated servers pose risks to the performance of your network, and in worst cases, trigger a complete shutdown.

What to do: Fortunately, there is a range of practical solutions, including streamlining hardware cables, managing and directing proper airflow (with the help of blanking panels and rack-mounted fans), that can help to check server room temperature and facilitate smooth operations.

2. Humidity

While humidity is less likely a hazard when compared to rising temperature, you should guard against it nonetheless. Persisting moisture can lead to condensation inside the server room hardware, triggering the risks of rusting, corrosion and short-circuits. Moreover, humidity can also result in building up of dirt and minerals that can eventually trap the heat inside and damage equipment.

On the contrary, persisting low humidity levels can also be disruptive, exposing your equipment to static electricity – something that can significantly cripple performance.

What to do: Equip your server room with a low-cost digital thermometer to monitor humidity levels. Remember that temperature and humidity are interrelated; it is imperative that you check both.

3. Power interruption

Blackouts and power cuts can be devastating to servers and overall network performance. In case you are lucky, you will only lose time as you try to set up your system again. In case luck doesn’t favour you, you might have to end up replacing the entire set up and cope with potential loss of crucial data.

What to do: Uninterrupted power supply is the best antidote to this. Fortunately, there are devices available in the market that can safeguard your server, switches and routers against unannounced power cuts. These also provide battery back-up should there be an outage.

4. Vibration (Motion)

Vibrations can dislodge circuit boards and chips, and damage spinning hard drives and other components critical to your server system. However, direct contact is not the only cause. Any Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system or vehicular traffic can cause vibrations, should they be/happen adjacent to the server room.

What to do: You can plan the server room space in such a way that it doesn’t come in contact with any vibrating source. Position the data centre away from the reach of people or other large machinery. Also, consider investing in shock-absorbing accessories – anti-vibration shelves, for instance.

5. Water seepage

Damages caused by water are one of the bigger menaces that businesses face with server rooms and data centres. In fact, water seepage causes around 25% of all hardware and equipment-related damages. Any compromise on plumbing, be it behind the walls or ceiling, is the primary culprit here.

What to do: Keep an eye out for possible leakages regularly. Unfortunately, this is the best line of defence that you can take, considering it might not always be feasible to set up the server room away from areas with plumbing or water sources.

In conclusion

Taking adequate measures can avert potential damages to your business equipment and server room. Cyber Group is one of the leading manufacturers of Server Room Security systems that go a long way in identifying and stalling server room-related damages and averting network disruption.