IT MAY BE HOT OUTSIDE BUT WHO WANTS SHORTS IN THE OFFICE?

As Offices Do Their Best To Keep Employees Cool, Don’t Forget To Ensure Your IT Equipment Is Protected From The Heatwave

ramsac, a leading IT solutions consultancy, today urged companies to consider the health of its IT infrastructure in addition to the wellbeing of employees as temperatures across the UK reach 35 °C.

In an ideal world, the backbone of any IT infrastructure will reside in a climate controlled, fully air conditioned server room. For many small businesses this simply isn’t a realistic option and their servers, switches, routers and firewalls are stored in closed cabinets with no ventilation. “This means that, with no fresh air coming in and certainly no hot air escaping, vital components are being left in a potentially troublesome environment. Clearly this is of concern at any time of year, but with external temperatures rising the problem is exacerbated,” explains Managing Director of ramsac, Robert May.

Routers and firewalls in particular have no cooling system and although servers and some professional switches have internal fans to channel the heat away from internal components, they rely on the quality of the air outside to do their job.

ramsac offers some basic precautions to keep IT running as the heatwave looks set to continue throughout July, “Review the location and environment of the key equipment that everyone relies on, namely the servers and network switches,” advises May. “A simple fan will ensure that air is cooled before its is circulated into  devices; a server locked in a closed, hot cabinet will only be able to circulate the same hot air around, which is counter productive and the addition of a fan will ensure that the air is cooled before it is pulled into the server.”