In today's data-driven economy, uptime is the lifeblood of your data center operations. For those managing legacy facilities, ensuring continuous operation amid growing demands especially presents unique challenges. Many facility managers with limited teams struggle with maintenance strategies that can prevent the costly downtime that threatens their business. Predictive maintenance offers a practical approach to enhancing reliability while optimizing facility performance for legacy and modern data centers.

Legacy Data Centers: Unique Maintenance Challenges

Legacy data centers face distinctive maintenance hurdles not encountered by their newer counterparts. Facility managers must balance squeezing every last drop of practical, economic performance out of aging infrastructure while ensuring reliable uptime. With aging systems, these facilities often require more nuanced maintenance approaches.

For legacy data centers, where equipment life cycles may be further along, staying on top of equipment maintenance becomes especially critical. Every piece of hardware has a shelf life, and legacy systems that become outdated can contribute to budget impacts that negatively affect a data center's bottom line.

With outages potentially costing data centers $100,000 or more on average, the financial stakes are high. Legacy facilities must maintain a comprehensive uptime strategy that ensures cooling systems, integrated facility energy strategies, and backup power systems work seamlessly toward the industry-standard "five 9s" (99.999% uptime)."five 9s" (99.999% uptime).

Building an Effective Predictive Maintenance Program for Legacy Data Centers

Developing a predictive maintenance program for legacy facilities involves several targeted steps:

01 Assess Current Performance

Begin with a preliminary assessment of PUE, site layout, cooling needs, and control strategy to uncover opportunities for improvement. For legacy facilities, this assessment is particularly valuable in identifying systems nearing end-of-life.

02 Modernize Critical Systems

Major changes to critical systems can improve efficiency and reduce energy and water spend, and are most cost-effective when making end-of-life upgrades. This is especially relevant for legacy cooling systems that may be operating far below modern efficiency standards.

03 Implement Smart Monitoring

Legacy facilities benefit enormously from modern building management systems (BMS) that provide a thousand-foot view of all your data center systems. These systems enable integration of HVAC, mechanical, security, and lighting controls, offering a more holistic view of efficiency, losses, and areas for improvement.

04 Establish Redundancy Controls

For aging facilities, implementing strategic redundancy controls becomes critical, including backup power systems, dual power supplies with automated failover, and redundant cooling units to ensure continuous operation during equipment failures.

05 Create Predictive Frameworks

Utilize operational practices, tracking data, and ongoing assessment to motivate required maintenance tasks and steer toward both operational excellence and sustainability goals. Expert consultants can provide valuable specialized knowledge for facility teams with limited staff, applying portfolio-wide best practices that help legacy data centers avoid common pitfalls stemming from design-operations gaps.

Warning Signs Legacy Data Center Managers Must Watch For

Facility managers overseeing legacy data centers should remain vigilant for these specific warning signs:

01 Inefficient Cooling

Legacy cooling systems often struggle with increased server rack densities in recent years, leading to more heat generation and potential system strain.

02 Building Envelope Issues

Older facilities may have compromised building envelopes, leading to energy waste and potential equipment damage that can cascade into more serious problems.

03 Outdated HVAC Systems

Legacy HVAC may be running on outdated refrigerants that don't meet current sustainability standards and pose reliability risks.

04 Control System Limitations

Aging control systems may struggle with managing airflow, a tricky process, especially for legacy data centers with changing equipment profiles.

05 Equipment Nearing End-of-Life

Systems approaching or beyond their designed lifespan present elevated failure risks and should be prioritized for replacement or enhanced monitoring.

Addressing these warning signs promptly prevents minor issues from escalating into major problems that can lead to catastrophic downtime.

For legacy facilities specifically, consultants can help modernize cooling systems, seal the building envelope, upgrade to efficient lighting, and update HVAC systems – all critical areas where aging data centers often underperform. In one telecom facility case study, expert intervention in cooling systems achieved $175,000 in annual savings, with payback in just over a year.

Take the Next Step

Legacy data centers face unique challenges in today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, but with the right predictive maintenance strategy, these challenges can become opportunities for optimization. By implementing a comprehensive approach to predictive maintenance—from performance assessment to smart monitoring and redundancy controls—legacy facilities can extend their lifespan, improve efficiency, and avoid costly downtime incidents.

Get the full picture, including strategies to mitigate operating costs, improve capacity, and ensure maximum uptime in our new white paper. Download our comprehensive, ungated white paper or get in touch with Mantis’ data center team to start your data center’s predictive maintenance strategy.