“With great power comes great responsibility.” It took Spiderman quite a while to take Uncle Ben’s wise words to heart, and it nearly cost him everything. It doesn’t take a super hero to take responsibility for great power. Every day data center managers and other IT professionals wield power for their use. It’s an awesome thing – at the right levels everyone is happy, but power out of control – well, it can cost you everything.
It is widely understood that properly grounding your equipment, whether you manage a small telecommunications room or a large data center, is very important. No one wants to see their financial investment destroyed or their network rendered inoperable. If you think your chances are good that you won’t suffer from a lightning strike, you may be right, but any excess power surges can damage sensitive equipment.
A recent Data Center Journal article provided these eye-opening facts:
- Nearly one-third of the damage in the data center equipment results from electrostatic discharge
- The lightning from the sky consists of millions of volts whereas only few ten volts are required to cause damage to sensitive electronic equipment, hence the necessity to isolate the equipment from lightning effects need not be overemphasized.
- Other sources of voltages surges include switching electrical devices ON and OFF such as air conditioners, monitors etc.
- Millions of dollars are lost every year due to faulty equipment which are as a result of improper grounding
- Several million dollars are lost indirectly due to the downtime of the data center apart from the cost of replacing equipment as listed in the previous point
CPI understands the importance of protecting your network. In addition to providing the infrastructure to safely organize, store and secure your equipment, we offer grounding and bonding products to further protect your investment. We recently added several new products to our Grounding and Bonding product family that include:
Equipment Ground Jumper Kit – Connects equipment chassis to the grounding busbar along the sides of racks with a 24” long jumper that includes lugs at each end. Some server and most chassis switches have auxiliary ground connections.
Pipe Clamps with Grounding Connector – Supports ground wires from metal pipes of various sizes. Supplies a ground connection for a pipe and will support up to two wires parallel or perpendicular to the pipe. Use in data centers and in premise facilities.
Pedestal Clamps with Grounding Connector – Secures ground wires from round or square raised access floor pedestals. Provides a ground connection for the pedestal and supports up to four wires from the pedestal. Use in data centers to create a signal reference grid under the raised access floor using #6 AWG or 2/0 round wire.
Compression Lugs – Use to connect copper or tinned copper conductors to busbars, CPI Racks, Cabinets or Cable Runway. Slotted and 90º Slotted Compression Lugs have one round and one slotted hole to match hole spacing on equipment mounting rails, and provides a better solution for attaching to the Universal hole pattern.
Ground Wire – Creates custom length ground jumpers to bond CPI Racks, Cabinets and Cable Runway to the Telecommunications Grounding Busbars. Use with ground lugs and compression taps to make point-to-point connections. Sold in 100’ lengths.
Rack Ground Bar Kit – Includes a thin strip of tinned copper that attaches to the racks equipment mounting rails to provide direct ground contact for rack-mount equipment or a convenient bonding strip. Sized to fit a 7’ high rack with EIA-310-D Universal hole pattern and 45 RMU. Functions as a busbar.
For a complete overview of CPI's grounding products, move your cursor over the image below or visit www.chatsworth.com/grounding. If you have questions or have an example of the importance of grounding your equipment, please leave a comment.
Kim Ream, eMarketing Designer