Bob Allan, BACS Contamination Control CEO and founder, addressed the AFCOM Canberra Chapter during their quarterly meeting on November 14. His presentation entitled “Data Centre/IT Cleaning - The Standards and disasters I have known” covered data centre cleaning in relation to ISO 14644 standards with a few horror stories included to illustrate how badly things can go wrong. With the proliferation of cloud computing, managed services and co-location, customers want a guarantee that the environment which houses their critical data or equipment is clean enough not to pose a risk to their operation. The International Standards Organisation developed ISO 14644-1 Classification of Air Cleanliness in 1999. Though not a specific computer environment standard, ISO 14644 applies to cleanrooms and “associated controlled environments”. Increasingly, the IT industry considers data centres to be controlled environments and has begun referencing ISO 14644. Incorporating cleanroom standards into data centre facility maintenance can benefit not only cleanliness levels, but also operational reliability.

Bob shared with the audience a few examples of computer room disasters he personally witnessed during his thirty years of experience in cleaning IT environments. Around 25 data centre professionals from the Canberra area attended the meeting held at the Canberra Institute of Technology campus in Bruce. AFCOM, established in 1980, is the world’s leading data centre industry association with thousands of industry professional members drawn from over 4,500 data centres worldwide. There are four AFCOM Chapters active in Australia (Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra). Click here to request a copy of the presentation slides and the “10 Step Plan to Meeting ISO 14644-1 Particle Standards in a Data Centre” or read further about the impact of ISO 14644 standards on computer environments.