Subscribe to the Data Center Knowledge Newsletter
Get analysis and expert insight on the latest in data center business and technology delivered to your inbox daily.
Essential Workers: Keeping Data Centers Running During the Pandemic update from May 2020
This is what life inside data centers during the COVID-19 pandemic looks like. (Gallery)
Yevgeniy Sverdlik
May 8, 2020
16 Slides
A CoreSite engineer testing a cross-connect for acceptable light loss at the company’s data center in Chicago.CoreSite
CE Colo
A warning sign at the entrance to the CE Colo data center in Prague
iomart
Staff in the lobby of the iomart data center in Maidenhead, UK.
About 50 engineers are working at the company’s 11 UK data centers, keeping things running for customers, the company’s spokesperson, Jane Robertson, told DCK.
iomart
An iomart engineer wearing a facemask at the company’s data center in Maidenhead, UK.
About 50 engineers are working at the company’s 11 UK data centers, keeping things running for customers, the company’s spokesperson, Jane Robertson, told DCK.
GPX
A GPX engineer wearing a facemask and gloves while at work at one of the company’s facilities.
GPX sent us photos of its data centers in Cairo, where many financial services and pharmaceutical companies are now relying on them to “keep the lights on,” and in Mumbai, where GPX hosts major points of presence for network operators, content delivery networks, content companies, and cloud providers, according to Michael Morrisroe, the company’s spokesman.
GPX
A GPX engineer wearing a facemask and gloves while at work at one of the company’s facilities.
GPX sent us photos of its data centers in Cairo, where many financial services and pharmaceutical companies are now relying on them to “keep the lights on,” and in Mumbai, where GPX hosts major points of presence for network operators, content delivery networks, content companies, and cloud providers, according to Michael Morrisroe, the company’s spokesman.
GPX
A GPX engineer wearing a facemask inside the operations center at one of the company’s facilities.
GPX sent us photos of its data centers in Cairo, where many financial services and pharmaceutical companies are now relying on them to “keep the lights on,” and in Mumbai, where GPX hosts major points of presence for network operators, content delivery networks, content companies, and cloud providers, according to Michael Morrisroe, the company’s spokesman.
GPX
GPX engineers wearing facemasks and gloves behind their workstations at the operations center at one of the company’s facilities.
GPX sent us photos of its data centers in Cairo, where many financial services and pharmaceutical companies are now relying on them to “keep the lights on,” and in Mumbai, where GPX hosts major points of presence for network operators, content delivery networks, content companies, and cloud providers, according to Michael Morrisroe, the company’s spokesman.
CE Colo
A CE Colo engineer takes a selfie while wearing a facemask inside the company’s data center in Prague.
CoreSite
A CoreSite engineer updating his work order for IR scanning at the company’s data center in Reston, Virginia.
CoreSite
A CoreSite engineer closing a breaker for a power work order at the company’s data center in Reston, Virginia.
CoreSite
A CoreSite engineer testing a cross-connect for acceptable light loss at the company’s data center in Chicago.
GPX
A GPX engineer wearing a facemask and gloves while at work at one of the company’s facilities.
GPX sent us photos of its data centers in Cairo, where many financial services and pharmaceutical companies are now relying on them to “keep the lights on,” and in Mumbai, where GPX hosts major points of presence for network operators, content delivery networks, content companies, and cloud providers, according to Michael Morrisroe, the company’s spokesman.
GPX
A GPX engineer wearing a facemask and gloves while at work at one of the company’s facilities.
GPX sent us photos of its data centers in Cairo, where many financial services and pharmaceutical companies are now relying on them to “keep the lights on,” and in Mumbai, where GPX hosts major points of presence for network operators, content delivery networks, content companies, and cloud providers, according to Michael Morrisroe, the company’s spokesman.
GPX
A GPX engineer wearing a facemask and gloves while at work at one of the company’s facilities.
GPX sent us photos of its data centers in Cairo, where many financial services and pharmaceutical companies are now relying on them to “keep the lights on,” and in Mumbai, where GPX hosts major points of presence for network operators, content delivery networks, content companies, and cloud providers, according to Michael Morrisroe, the company’s spokesman.
CE Colo
A sign, warning those exiting “Data Center Safe Zone” of zombie danger outside CE Colo’s data center in Prague.
CE Colo
A sign offering words of encouragement for those exiting CE Colo’s data center in Prague.
CE Colo
A sign offering words of encouragement for those exiting CE Colo’s data center in Prague.
Facemasks, hand sanitizer, and ample distance between people. These things are all too familiar to everybody by now.
Like doctors, nurses, store clerks, police, and firefighters, data center operators have been classified as essential workers in much of the world, and they’ve been taking the necessary precautions when coming to work.
We wanted to see how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the day-to-day work inside data centers. To find out, we’ve spoken to people on the ground remotely and written about what they’ve told us. But we couldn’t see for ourselves – for obvious reasons.
So, we asked data center operators to help us out and send us photos that show how things have changed for the people operating digital infrastructure, which in these recent months became more critical than it had ever been before.
Here are some of the photos we have received in response. Not surprisingly, as you will see, work in data centers has changed in very similar ways, be it in Cairo, Mumbai, Prague, Maidenhead, Glasgow, Chicago, or Reston, Virginia. Data center engineers across the world are following the same safety protocol, while their customers are asked to follow suit.
What these photos don’t reveal, of course, is the tremendous change in processes the operators now use to run their facilities. They’ve left skeleton crews at the sites themselves, having as many workers as possible do their work remotely. Shift handoffs are done indirectly to prevent cross-shift infection. Non-essential maintenance is deferred.
We’d like to thank CE Colo, CoreSite, GPX, and iomart for sharing these images. And, we’d like to thank all data center operators around the world for enabling our society to continue functioning through this crisis. Without you, there would be no email, social media, video conferencing, digital classrooms, online shopping, movie streaming, or news websites. We would all be stranded if it wasn’t for your efforts.
Find all our coverage of the coronavirus pandemic’s effects on the data center industry here.
About the Author(s)
You May Also Like
