Zinc Whiskers Remediation

IT Cleaning Ltd Magazine Article published in Cleanroom Technology

“Contamination has been the indirect cause of more IT downtime than all the fires, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, and disgruntled employees combined.” – Jon William Toigo, Disaster Recovery Planning, Third Edition.  Zinc Whiskers are more prevalent than previously considered and acknowledged. At the same time, we can live with Zinc Whiskers and enjoy reasonably reliable operations. But it is important to acknowledge and manage the condition – not ignore it. Living with a chronic contagious disease provides a useful operational model. Once a surface becomes a Zinc Whisker source, it will always be a Zinc Whisker source. Left undisturbed, reliable operation may continue. Unless interaction with that surface is required, the Zinc Whisker status of that material need not be disclosed. However, if interaction with the Zinc Whisker source is required,then service staff should be informed and trained to take appropriate precautions to prevent any unnecessary release of Zinc Whiskers and possible equipment damage or broader facility contamination. Are you having unexplained hardware failures – particularly disk drives and power supplies? Are you having unexplained data corruption problems? Do your problems get more frequent or severe after you move equipment or work in the underfloor? Have you installed the latest lightning fast server or CPU only to find it doesn’t seem as reliable as your old legacy system? You may have Zinc Whisker contamination within your data centre. If you are worried contact us we can help . We can sample your Data Room using sticky pads, then have them analysed. This will let you know if you have Zinc Whiskers.
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