Mission Critical - Winter 2008 - (Page 57)

High-Density Data Centers continued Legend A - Floor Systems (And under floor components) B - Room Power Distribution C - Room Climate Control D - Cable Routing Systems (Overhead or under floor) E - Equipment Enclosures F - In-Row High Density Cooling G - In-Row Power Distribution Figure 1 – Components of the data center minimal impact on one another and where any changes or additions can be incorporated quickly and effectively, again without significant disturbance to existing components. Figure 1 shows this stylized facility. Thinking About Design The need to build new data centers or expand existing sites will only continue to grow. One Rittal customer recently said, “We can not build data centers fast enough.” Almost all end users clearly stated that high-density installations will be a key part of any new construction. The rush to B build means that planning for a future data center must include considering a number of variables, any of which can undermine the best design intentions. For some appliF cations, it may be practical to expand an existing site, floor space permitting. But even this simplest of approaches may still limit any future growth. So, most customers consider at G least a partial deployment of high-density devices with their associated installation requirements. Installations can be divided into two very generic categories: Updating an existing facility or building a new site. And while each has some project-specific criteria, there are several key, common considerations. Table 1 (on the next page) provides the starting checklist. Once these general criteria are reviewed, the end user must develop a specific plan of action, one designed to meet a specific set of goals. These user-defined goals should include a desired level of growth to be maintained. Other objectives may be providing improved or enhanced levels of service to a customer base, bringing new products or services to market, maintaining a specific budget, or just handling all the new devices and applications being deployed. With these goals established, specific values can be assigned, providing benchmarks that can be measured and successes achieved. Targets should be realistic and reflect the importance of the concerns listed above. Flexibility must be included, because change is inevitable. Of the categories listed in table 1, space availability, power availability (including UPS capacity), and cooling capacity are the three most critical. Of course, there must be sufficient space to support existing and proposed hardware. This not only includes the IT components, but also supporting infrastructure, i.e., electrical distribution panels, CRAC/ CRAH units, etc. Consolidation of components may be the only solution, if there is insufficient floor space to expand. But power and cooling requirements in the room and on per enclosure will rise with consolidation, driving the installation to a high-density configuration. And even with enough room, it may be practical to designate an area within the facility to support high-density loads, segregated from the remainder of the installation. This area would include extra power with greater circuit load capacity and chilled water or refrigerant piping for high-density cooling solutions to support the increased loads. It may even prove feasible to reduce overall floor space usage by consolidating IT loads, thus saving on building costs, floor space costs, and ancillary costs for lighting, power, room cooling, etc. Table 1. Starting checklist Is there enough space – building and/or land? Is there sufficient utility power available? Is there sufficient UPS capacity? Is there sufficient room cooling capacity? Can a facility accommodate high-density devices? Will new or additional cable infrastructure be needed? Is there redundancy and plans for disaster recovery? Who owns the site? The hardware? The operations? What are the plans for the future? Winter 2008 www.missioncriticalmagazine.com | 57 http://www.missioncriticalmagazine.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Mission Critical - Winter 2008

Mission Critical - Winter 2008 Table of Contents Editorial: What Have We Been Doing? Cronin’s Workshop: Imagining the Perfect Data Center Power And Cooling Solution Digital Power: The Next Edge in Business Resiliency Zinc Whiskers: Keeping Up With The Green Movement Mission Critical Care: Shipping, Staging, and Installation Legal Perspectives: “A Reliable Energy Supply Is Key to Data Center Success” Continued Payback, Instant Protection Beyond the Nines The Green Information Technology Revolution Health Care Network Offers Glimpse of the Future of Backup Power High-Density Data Centers – Discuss, Design, Deploy High Performance Data Centers Call for Innovative Cooling Techniques More Data in the Data Center Five Considerations for Powering Data Center Racks New Products Industry News Events Classifieds Letters Ad Index Datacenter Wiki: wiki-Mission Critical

Mission Critical - Winter 2008

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