Important Upfront Facts to Know when Building a New Data Center

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Building a new data center or server room is a very complex project, whether you're building a small 1,000-square-foot server room or a 100,000-square-foot data center. Here are some important facts your IT department needs to think about prior to beginning:

1. Determine design requirements early in the process:
• IT hardware load projections and cabinet load densities (blade servers?).
• Electrical and HVAC redundancy options.
• Fire detection and suppression systems options.
  
2. Site selection:
• Square foot requirement.
• Structural requirements (ground floor or upper floor loading issues).
• Proximity to utilities (power, cooling, communication).
  
3. Comprehensive, coordinated design documents ensure a successful construction project:
   
• Partner with a data center consultant with specific experience in this industry.
• A design consultant with data center construction and service experience will incorporate maintainability into the design.
• Engineering site reviews during construction ensure that the design criteria are incorporated into the build-out.
  
4.  Properly document warranty and service agreements:
• Part of the construction project close-out should include warranty documentation.
• Warranties typically carry some level of parts replacement, but do not include preventive maintenance agreements.
• Service and maintenance agreements during and after the warranty period should be planned and can be budgeted at the close of the construction project.

These are just a few critical things that need to be looked at during the construction of your data center - if you don't have staff with the skill set to manage this process, it is extremely important that you hire a construction company who focuses on building data centers or to hire a data center consultant to represent them during the construction.

Submitted by Jim Stark, Design/Build Manager - Electronic Environments Corporation

Where can Thermal Imaging Help in Your Data Center?

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Thermal imaging or thermography is very important for different components in your data center. It is a must for all electrical and mechanical systems and should be part of the regular maintenance schedule.

Thermography allows you to detect irregularities in systems before they can become a problem. The following electrical systems should have this performed:

• Electrical switchgear
• Uninterruptible power supplies (UPS)
• Automatic transfer switches
• Server systems
• Cooling systems

There can be problems in these systems that cannot be detected with the naked eye. Using infrared thermal imaging can prevent equipment failure and unplanned outages and can help detect overloaded circuits or loose connections which can cause degradation.

Thermography also is important role in detecting hot spots in your server racks and network equipment. If these are not detected, these high temperatures can compromise your data center network reliability.

So you can see that using thermal imaging as part of your regular maintenance is really important to keep your data center or server room up and running continuously.

Have you used thermography as part of your data center maintenance? If so, tell us what problems were detected that otherwise might have ended up being a huge problem for you.

UPS Systems Provide Power Protection for Data Centers - Size them Correctly

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A power outage, however brief, can cause most data centers and businesses to grind to a halt. As a result, information, productivity and profit can be lost. Using an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) is the easiest way to provide secure power to protect your mission critical systems.  

The UPS system protects against all types of power supply failures and disturbances. How does this work? By positioning the UPS system between incoming power supply and the load, when then the main power fails, the UPS system switches to the backup UPS batteries, ensuring an unbroken power supply is available to keep the critical load fully operational.

The need to properly size a UPS system is critical to its reliability and the systems need to be able to grow along with your data center. Data center managers need to make sure that in today's ever changing per-rack power demands - this is done correctly.

Recently Electronic Environments Corporation (EEC) Design/Build Manager, Jim Stark, offered his knowledge on the subject. I encourage you to check out the editorial at processor.com. You will find answers to questions such as:

• What are the main factors to consider when choosing the size of a UPS for a data center? 

• What is important for readers to understand about VA ratings of UPSs?   

• Are there different considerations for blade servers vs standard servers?

• And more...

Does anyone have additional recommendations for sizing a UPS system?