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ISO-Base™ Installation at University of California, San Diego, CAby Charlotte Klock / Data Center Director
The Seismic Mitigation Project for Administrating Computing and Telecommunications at University of California, San Diego had several basic requirements. First was to find a way to provide seismic stability in the existing data center without having major expense or downtime, second, be expandable for future growth, and third, be as non-intrusive as possible since equipment is frequently relocated in the room.
As the Director of the central data center for UCSD, I knew that there would be major impact to the operation of the general campus if the data center were knocked offline because of an earthquake. The data center runs the core financial, student and personnel systems as well as operates the main business and student web portals and is critical for the day-to-day operations of the campus. I also knew we needed to prevent what I call a "tip-over" disaster. The "tip-over" is whenthere is potential injury or damage if a piece of furniture or equipment is not restrained in a way to prevent it from falling on top of someone or something and being totally destroyed. The solution that satisfied UCSD requirements came from a company called Hazard Reduction Systems, Inc. (Worksafe Technologies) in Huntington Beach, California.
With the approval of management, I was able to procure enough restraints to secure all the monitors and furniture in the data center. In addition, we installed under all major computing components the ISO-Base seismic isolation platform, a product developed by Worksafe Technologies.
The IOS-Base platforms were installed under live equipment cabinets without service interruption with the exception of our tape drives. That is only because the cabinets stretch 30+ feet and they could not be lifted as one unit. We installed the first ISO-Base platforms in July 2005 and plan to have them under all additional mission-critical equipment moving forward.
The data center has since become a showcase for management to display seismic best practices. UCSD is in the process of scoping out additional uses of the platform for their key telecommunications rooms throughtout the campus. Other UC campuses are also pursuing the potential use of these products.
I am convinced that we will have a much greater chance of not being down because of the mitigation steps we have taken by using the WorkSafe products.
Charlotte Klock
Director, Data Center
University of California, San Diego