Suggestions for Building an Operations and Maintenance Team for Server Rooms in Wuhai Hong Kong Station Cluster and Developing Emergency Response Procedures

Introduction: As the business integration between Wuhai and Hong Kong data centers becomes increasingly close, server room operations face challenges related to cross-regional management and high availability requirements. This article focuses on building operations and maintenance teams and emergency drill processes, offering practical organizational and procedural recommendations that balance compliance with business continuity.

It is recommended to adopt a hierarchical collaboration model: The local (Wuhai) on-duty team is responsible for on-site inspections and hardware troubleshooting, while the remote (Hong Kong or centralized) support team handles network, virtualization, and platform-level fault diagnosis. Management is responsible for strategy and resource coordination to ensure clear responsibilities and well-defined response pathways.

Operations personnel need to have expertise in areas such as power supply, cooling, networking, security, and virtualization in the data center. Establish a periodic training program that combines vendor skill certifications with post-drill reviews, and implement a skill matrix assessment to ensure that both Wuhai and Hong Kong have complementary and backup capabilities.

Clarify the responsibility list, SLAs, and escalation paths for each position. Standardized handover forms and shift logs are developed, and an electronic work order system is used to record the handling process. This ensures that no information is lost during handovers and enables traceability, thereby improving efficiency in cross-shift and cross-regional collaboration.

Establish a unified monitoring platform that covers the server room environment, power supply, temperature and humidity, bandwidth, as well as metrics at the host and application layers. Tiered alarm configuration defines thresholds and notification channels, utilizing SMS, email, and instant messaging tools to deliver alerts through multiple channels, thereby reducing false positives and missed alerts.

Establish daily, weekly, and monthly inspection checklists and schedules, including equipment cleaning, cabinet wiring, UPS self-checks, air conditioning operation, and fire protection system inspections. All inspection items are recorded electronically and incorporated into KPIs. Potential hazards are reported promptly and tracked until resolved.

Changes follow a four-step process of review, approval, rollback, and verification. Important changes must be made during off-peak business hours, and rollbacks must be tested. Establish a Configuration Management Database (CMDB) to bring all physical and logical resources under unified management, facilitating risk assessment.

A hierarchical backup and offsite backup strategy is adopted, with core data being regularly synchronized or replicated via snapshots between the Wuhai and Hong Kong data centers. Establish Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO), and include backup restoration as part of regular drills.

The drill is divided into three phases: tabletop exercises, functional drills, and hands-on exercises. Clarify objectives, scenarios, and evaluation criteria before each drill ； After the drill, a review is conducted to identify areas for improvement and assign responsibilities, ensuring that the Wuhai-Hong Kong cross-domain response chain can be verified.

Establish a list of cross-regional emergency contacts and communication backup channels, and define the escalation procedures and decision-making authority for cross-regional failures. Standardized documents and shared platforms are used to ensure consistent understanding of the same events across both locations, reducing communication delays and misinterpretations.

Comply with local regulations and industry compliance requirements by implementing physical and network perimeter protection, access control, and log auditing. Regular third-party security assessments and penetration testing are conducted, and operational processes are included in audits to ensure compliance and traceability.

Summary: It is recommended to advance Wuhai from four dimensions: organization, processes, technology, and drills Hong Kong Station Cluster Development of server room operation and maintenance capabilities. Priority should be given to establishing monitoring and emergency response mechanisms, conducting regular drills, and making continuous improvements to ensure high availability and rapid recovery capabilities for cross-regional operations.