Your professional team for
data center deep cleaning

Your advantages of a data center deep clean by us

Clear targets

Our services such as data center cleaning are aimed at fail-safe operation in data centers and server rooms. For data center operators and co-locators, this means lower costs through energy efficiency, high availability and value retention.

We specialize in data center deep clean

PING Rechenzentrum Reinigung GmbH is the first and only nationwide company to specialize exclusively in the decontamination and cleaning of critical IT infrastructures such as data centers, including according to DIN ES ISO 14664-1, class 8.

To make sure

From the start of the project, PING GmbH offers smart procedures, tested technology and premium services for sustainable data center operation including server operation by trained and security-checked staff.

We understand your requirements for a specialist team

Our team, consisting of construction, electrical and IT system engineers and architects, understands your servers and your server room as part of your IT infrastructure and your data center as a complex property with a clearly defined life cycle.

Which standards are adhered to in a data center deep clean?

We adhere to the following standards when cleaning data centers:

• Wrist strap grounding system: Ensures that the personnel’s resistance to earth is within the standard specification
• ESD-compliant clothing: Used to cover possible electrical fields that are caused by everyday clothing (e.g. polyester).
• Test device for people grounding systems: Check the people’s leakage resistances for wrist grounding, footwear grounding for monitoring access to the EPA.
• Surface Resistance Meter: For checking electrostatically conductive or dissipative surfaces in the EPA.
• Electric field meter: For measuring electrostatic fields and charges.
• ESD protection zone EPA: Refurbishment and cleaning of the active hardware components, server rooms and data centers, which protect against ESD damage, takes place in an EPA.
• ESD cleaning technology vacuum cleaner: Conductive version.
• ESD cleaning technology ESD brush: dissipative.
• ESD cleaning technology wipes: ESD wipes with conductive fibers. • Specialist: Only ESD trained specialists from the electrical industry are used.
• Particle measurements according to ISO 14644-1, including measurement reports.

What does a data center cleaning cost?

The calculation framework is always based on quantity or area and varies with the requirements such as the degree of contamination, the height of the cavity and the type of raised floor such as the control room floor as well as other local and structural conditions such as the height of the ceiling or the number of cold aisles or racks.

Calculation example

A calculation example for a professional standard special cleaning of a data center with medium contamination and a size of approx. 600 m² could therefore be between 15 and 30 euros per square meter. If the data center can only be cleaned after 5 p.m. or on the weekend, corresponding surcharges apply. It goes without saying that regular cleaning cycles can also be specified, for example every six months or annually.

What must be considered when deep cleaning a data center?

Even if the main causes of server failures in the data center are known, the contamination of the servers in the data center by building dust and environmental dust is statistically one of the greatest risks for IT technology failures.

Due to our constant direct contact with the data center operators and IT managers (CIO), we often compare the contamination of IT technology with a person’s burnout.

If our customers‘ businesses are bodies, the server room is the brain.

As with the typical symptoms of burnout – total tiredness and inability to perform normal, productive work – it is also with servers running „at full speed“ whose fans and power supplies are clogged by construction dust or surrounding dust. If the person is burned out, they look for a treatment method that is tailored to their needs and that is helpful for them and that promises ways out.

Many questions arise at once:

• What must be done first?
• How long should the treatment last?
• How do we define the result of the treatment (as far as we think result-oriented)?
• What financial costs will we have to face?
• Does the insurance company pay the full amount of the treatment?
• And the most important question: How productive is the person after the treatment compared to the time before burnout?

Which areas of the data center are cleaned?

The cleaning measure is only effective if all areas including the floor, ceiling, walls, cable routes, cable bundles and TGA of the data center are cleaned systematically (from top to bottom).

If an area is left out, the fine dust from the uncleaned area swirls into the air over time and contaminates the data center again.

Why do data centers need to be cleaned regularly?

Value retention

We understand your data center as a complex property with a defined life cycle and your server room as part of the IT infrastructure.

Thanks to our know-how in the field of project management of complex real estate projects, our customers enjoy the added value that sets our services apart from the competition: competent and targeted structural and FM advice on optimal data center operation.

Stand out from competitors

Here it always depends on the goals and foresight of a data center operator. We live in the age of tough competition from the ultra-modern data centers.

Data center operators are ready to do almost anything to stand out from the competition. Logically, sustainability aspects play a major role here.

Improve server utilization

Data centers and server rooms should be regularly maintained, cleaned and checked for their efficiency. In this way, the utilization of the server can not only be checked through regular inspection and cleaning, but also sustainably improved.

Avoidance of server failure

Server failure is a well-known, often costly horror scenario with economic consequences that can usually be avoided.

Even if the most important causes of server failures are known, the contamination of the server by construction dust and environmental dust is and remains statistically one of the greatest risks for IT technology failures.

Risks and consequences of dust and construction dust

Device fans pull construction dust

The subject of dust and construction dust in the raised floor of the data center, in the IT room, technical room or server room is often treated as secondary.

A cavity in the raised floor contaminated with dust and construction dust can lead to major problems. The device fans of the servers, switches, storage and backup components draw dust and construction dust onto the motherboards and into the hard drives.

Clogged air vents

If the server is in constant use, the operating temperature increases automatically. If the air slots on your servers are clogged with dust and dirt particles, the servers consume even more energy and also heat up.

Humidity

The number of server failures due to increased operating temperatures is increasing exponentially. Mostly invisible, but very dangerous for the IT hardware.

Dust and construction dust in connection with the „normal“ humidity lead to possible short circuits and overheating to the server failure. Loss of data and expensive IT downtime are the possible consequences.

How often should data centers be cleaned?

A data center cleaning cycle is part of the overall conception of a building operation and is designed, coordinated and approved by us individually and depending on the technical data center implementation.

We divide a data center of medium standard with e.g. cooling in the double floor, cold aisle containment and low passenger traffic into two cleaning groups:

• Group 1 with rotation 4 times a year – outer shell of the cold aisles and surface of the raised floor.
• Group 2 with rotation once every twelve to 18 months – complex cleaning of the cable routes, technical building equipment and hardware in operation as well as cavity floors.

How is the data center cleaning done?

What preparation has to be made?

The following things must be agreed between the client and the contractor:

• whether, when and in what form the employees on site have to be registered, for example with the security guards or similar,
• whether and in what form a briefing takes place,
• the duration and content of the instruction,
• whether personal protective equipment is necessary,
• the form of acceptance
• the form of the protocols
• the timing of the downtime
• Approval for the use of special work materials
• and other requirements on site: parking spaces, access to electricity and water, etc.

When is the cleaning done?

The customer processes are in the foreground for us, accordingly the times of the execution of the cleaning of the data center are adapted to the requirements of the customer.

Every time slot is conceivable for the execution, from the execution on working days during normal office hours to the execution in the evening or even on the weekend.

Will there be downtime?

No, we guarantee that there will be no downtime. The data center is usually cleaned during operation.

Who cleans the data centers?

PING RZ-reinigung GmbH consists of a team of architects, civil engineers, electrical engineers and IT system engineers, among others. We use SÜG verified specialists.

Our team is security checked according to the German Security Check Act (SÜG), and thus we give every data center operator the opportunity to commission only checked personnel.

In compliance with various DIN standards, our employees work with a mix of individual measures that are selected according to technical necessity and carefully documented in our own ESD control program. This extensive catalog of measures includes, among other things, a wide variety of requirements for processes and people such as employee training and labeling, equipment for cleaning technology and concepts against electrostatics, which our employees implement in our Premium Service.