If an enterprise chooses to build its own data center, server operations and maintenance will face numerous technical challenges, requiring a systematic management approach and professional solutions. For example, in areas such as hardware maintenance, environmental control, monitoring systems, security, and personnel management, enterprises need to promptly address operational challenges and develop strategies.
Preventing and quickly recovering from hardware failures is a primary challenge. The mean time between failures (MTBF) for server hardware is typically 100,000 hours, but in reality, disks, power supplies, and memory have high failure rates. We recommend the following solutions: Establish a spare parts library to store commonly used components (such as hard drives, power supplies, and RAID controller cards), and configure hot standby nodes for critical business servers. Use intelligent PDUs for remote power control, coupled with IPMI or iDRAC out-of-band management to quickly reboot faulty devices. Conduct regular hardware inspections, including monthly checks of disk SMART status, memory ECC error counts, and power supply output voltage fluctuations, to proactively identify potential failures.
Computer room environmental control directly impacts equipment stability. Temperature fluctuations exceeding ±2°C/hour can cause motherboard deformation and solder joint cracking. Humidity levels below 40% can easily generate static electricity, while humidity levels above 60% can cause condensation. The solution includes: using precision air conditioners to achieve N+1 redundancy, setting the temperature at 22±1°C and maintaining humidity between 45% and 55%. An environmental monitoring system is deployed to collect real-time data from temperature, humidity, smoke, and water sensors, with multi-level threshold alarms (e.g., a warning is issued when the temperature exceeds 26°C, and an emergency notification is triggered when the temperature exceeds 28°C). The cabinet layout uses hot and cold aisles to ensure cooling efficiency, and the recommended cabinet power density does not exceed 6kW per cabinet.
The operations and maintenance monitoring system needs to cover multiple metrics. Basic monitoring includes CPU usage, memory usage, disk IOPS, and network traffic, with a recommended collection frequency of at least 1 minute. Application-layer monitoring focuses on key business metrics such as database connection numbers, application response time, and transaction volume. A Prometheus + Grafana combination is deployed to collect and visualize metrics, with intelligent alert rules set (e.g., CPU usage exceeds 90% for five consecutive minutes and the system load exceeds the number of CPU cores). The log management system uses the ELK Stack to centrally store and analyze system logs, automatically identifying abnormal patterns through pattern recognition.
Security protection requires a defense-in-depth system. Deploy a firewall at the network layer to implement least privilege access control and close non-essential ports. Regularly update security patches at the system layer, and use SELinux or AppArmor to restrict process permissions. Deploy a WAF at the application layer to protect against web attacks, and enable auditing capabilities in the database. Conduct vulnerability scans every four weeks and penetration tests every six months, focusing on checking permission configurations and sensitive data leaks. Adopt the 3-2-1 backup strategy: maintain at least three copies, two on different media, and one in offline storage. Conduct regular recovery drills to verify backup validity.
Standardized personnel management and processes are crucial. The operations and maintenance team should implement a 24/7 on-call system and establish standard operating procedures (SOPs) covering common troubleshooting steps. Use a ticketing system to track all operations and maintenance operations for traceability. Conduct monthly troubleshooting reviews to analyze root causes and continuously optimize processes. Technical personnel should participate in professional technical training quarterly to keep their skills up-to-date. It is recommended to sign a technical support contract with the equipment supplier to secure rapid response capabilities from original equipment engineers.
Cost control requires refined operations. Electricity costs account for approximately 40% of total O&M costs. High-voltage DC power supply technology can improve energy efficiency by 5-8%. Virtualization technology increases server consolidation ratios to over 1:10, significantly reducing hardware investment. A DCIM system monitors real-time power usage effectiveness (PUE) and optimizes cooling strategies to keep PUE below 1.5. Establish an asset lifecycle management system, gradually retiring servers after five years of use to prevent maintenance costs from exceeding the residual value of the equipment.
Operating and maintaining a self-operated data center is a systematic project, requiring the close integration of technical measures with management processes. It is recommended to gradually build an automated O&M platform to automate routine inspections, configuration changes, system deployments, and other operations to reduce human error. At the same time, maintain an open technical solution to allow for future architectural evolution. These measures can increase server availability to over 99.9% and keep the mean time to repair (MTTR) to under two hours.
