AlfaTech Big Book: Data Centers

D ATA C E N T E R P H I L O S O P H Y

Location : The philosophy of design must take into account local weather and atmospheric conditions as well as utilities. Weather conditions of extreme cold or hot ambient temperatures, humidity and other considerations such as high atmospheric dust content in farming communities will need to be accounted for in the design. Utilities data such as power capacity, reliability and cost; and similar information for data fiber, fuel oil, water … etc. Local building codes may have a large impact on the types of HVAC systems allowed (efficiency), Power generator operational hours and pollution control, sound level and structural design requirements. Redundancy : The philosophy of redundancy must be based on and satisfy the operating philosophy of the data center company. Therefore, if the data center operating philosophy is to mirror all data between two distant sites, the loss of power, a large earthquake or other such events, would require the operation be run from a second site. This condition would require a lesser level of redundancy than an independent site requiring all redundancy be located on site which requires consideration for equipment redundancy when a generator or other major piece of equipment is down for maintenance.

Space Allocation : Each data center operator/owner will have a desired operational layout concept that must be incorporated into the Basis of Design for a given property providing building flexibility, along with local code requirements, building owner requirements, city requirements, and needs of any co-inhabitants in the building. This might include separation of batteries into dedicated rooms, EMF considerations , rack/row lengths, racks or cabinets to house servers, floor and roof seismic loading limits, raised floor height considerations, security concept, equipment access to data floor, generator and equipment yard sighting on a given lot, or other requirements. It is interesting that some clients are moving away from using raised floors. The overall concept of the data center usually starts with definition of operator philosophy on wire management such as data routes and power routes above or below raised floor or split; type of power distribution and power usage of a typical server rack. Power Systems : The philosophy of design for the data center power systems is either a radial or a distributed distribution system. Radial systems are used less frequently and typically on smaller facilities of less than 4000 amps because of the high cost and size of equipment above 4000 amps. Distributed distribution systems provide the opportunity to disperse power and keep equipment under 3000 amps and generator sets to a maximum size of 2 megawatts. The distributed distribution system is more reliable since a single point of failure will not necessarily bring down an entire system. A distributed system must be properly designed to include UPS loads, and HVAC loads to generator ability to start these loads. HVAC loads must be evenly spread across the distributed power busses to balance loads and ensure that all HVAC units serving an area are not taken off line when one bus goes down. Owner preference may be for use of PDUs or individual transformers and panels to distribute power to power strips on individual racks. Monitoring and power management can be done at rack level or 480 volt level with significant cost variation.