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I haven’t explored Processor to the extent that it looks like they deserve, but their article on avoiding personnel-caused mishaps in a data center environment is pretty helpful.

A couple of the most interesting points they bring up involve the psychology of screwing up.  First, make sure as an IT professional that you don’t fall into too much of a routine with tasks in the data center – allowing work to become a routine makes it too easy to forget what you’re doing and end up potentially messing up a delicate task.  Another interesting point is that stress makes human error more common – so focusing on figuring out a problem without adding undue stress is important in avoiding further mishaps.

Some more obvious points involve access to facilities.  Of course with less people in a data center, there are less opportunities for anyone to cause any problems.  When someone who isn’t an IT professional does need to come in, it’s important to make sure they know how to behave around servers and that kind of thing so that accidents can be properly evaded.

Possibly the most important point the Processor article brings up is that data centers and various IT environments maintain an air of secrecy about problems that occur, but this prevents important information about these issues rom ever being shared.  It’s understandable that a company might want to be protected from its competitors, but downtime is probably something everyone should be equipped to cope with as best as possible.

See the Processor article for more.

Elizabeth English