What Are The Features Of An Excellent Data Center Design?

Alex SmithHosting Solution Provider
Published:
Data center, now-a-days, is referred as the home of all the advanced technologies. In-fact, most of the businesses are now establishing their entire organizational structure around the IT capabilities.
Data center, now-a-days, is referred as the home of all the advanced technologies. In-fact, most of the businesses are now establishing their entire organizational structure around the IT capabilities. But, building a data center facility only appears to be a simple inception; it involves many aspects to be accomplished in correct manner. The architecture and construction of data center needs to be taken care for from the very beginning itself. The great motivator for such operations is “If you are unable to get it right for the first time, learn from your mistakes and aim again”. Even, the changes and retrofits in a data center unit may involve numerous tasks such as ripping up walls, floor, HVAC, and electricity that are difficult and expensive. 

Lots of companies are investing in data center business to hire them for dedicated servers, vps, emails or other hosting activities. It must be fully verified that the data center design is approved by an expert or fulfilling all requirements.
It is very prominent to have a clear understanding about the differences between a data center itself and its contents. A data center can be referred as the physical site, the raised floor, facility, network infrastructure (routers, switches, Internet connection, terminal servers), UPS (that kicks in if there is a power failure from the utility company), power generators (needed for the cases of extended blackouts), and air-conditioning units. On the other hand, the contents include data storage subsystems, servers, and shared monitors (as per requirement). The data center and its contents are equally important. Any data center is nothing more than a big, expensive, cold room without the contents. And the contents will be nothing more than expensive boat anchors without the data center.

Characteristics of an excellent data center design

Below mentioned are some features that make a data center design outstanding:
  1. Design Must Be Simple: Simplicity is what reduces the chances of error. It is great idea to label the tiles, ports and outlets as it will make installation of new equipment quite easy. Not only this, it also simple to troubleshoot the errors with existing hardware or replace it (If it is required).
  2. Design Must Be Scalable: After finalization, the design must work with similar efficiency regardless of the size of the data center.
  3. Design Must Be Modular: Earlier, designers used to build big complex structures utilizing small-sized manageable units, which can be easily designed and manufactured. It is very essential to construct data center with small building blocks that can be further partitioned into tiny blocks for high level of granularity
  4. Design Must Be Flexible: It is nearly impossible to guess the technical requirements for data center in advance. To construct a successful center for long-term use, it must be easily upgradable so that changing layouts or components should not cause any problem.
If your data center comprises of all the above mentioned features, it will be less expensive and much easier to utilize, monitor, maintain and expand.

Prior to construction, it is very crucial to create a plan for your data center unit. Key guidelines for its design, deployment and construction are:
  • Advance Planning
  • Worst-Case Considerations
  • Growth Planning
  • Design Simplification
  • Changes should be Planned
  • Labeling equipment, especially ports and cables
All the above mentioned information will work as a runbook for a construction of an outstanding data center design.
 
0
1,919 Views

Comments (0)

Have a question about something in this article? You can receive help directly from the article author. Sign up for a free trial to get started.