Formula 1 and data center teams document every little tweak, including who made it and why. Formula 1 and critical data center operations teams check on hundreds of elements and with a big differentiator: they do it in real time, and make necessary changes on the fly.ĭocumentation and reporting in the garage likely comes down to a repair manual that may be years old, and a list of services you’ve had performed in the past. A mechanic may hook your car up to a machine that gives him some baseline diagnostics on how well different systems are functioning – whether your oil pressure is up to snuff and if your catalytic converter still works. Performance monitoring in your local garage or typical facility is fairly limited. As you can imagine, the list is far more extensive and detailed for a Formula 1 vehicle, right down to how much it weighs and the octane of the fuel in the tank. Your mechanic likely refers to a list of routine maintenance that should be performed at certain mileage intervals, similar to the routine maintenance in a building. Standards and regulations align to data center operations best practices – things you should do or, in the case of regulations, must do. There’s lots more wiggle room in a non-critical facility. In a critical facility, if various elements aren’t tuned precisely it could mean equipment failure and potential customer downtime, which is unacceptable. It’s a similar situation with respect to precision and accuracy.
It’s like how your local mechanic can certainly change your oil and rotate tires according to manufacturer instructions, but not in a few seconds like the Formula 1 crew does. Whereas a traditional facilities management program simply focuses on the basics – making sure the lights are on and the heating and cooling are working – a critical facilities operations program rigorously adheres to industry best practices. Professionalism, precision, and standardsĬritical facility operations programs require a high level of professionalism in terms of mindset and attitude. At least nine elements differentiate the two teams: Critical facility operations, on the other hand, is like a Formula 1 race car team. Think of traditional facility maintenance, such as for an office building, as the local garage where you bring your car for routine repairs.
In this post I’m going to stick with the car analogy to explain the difference between a traditional facilities maintenance team and a critical facility operations team, such as those that handle data center operations. In a previous blog post I outlined why running an effective data center operations team involves many of the same elements as running a successful high-performance race car team.
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