ITMD 526 - Week - 4 Blog

Constructing a Data Center

A fully operational data center should comprise of aspects such as Availability (Up-time), Reliability, Safe & Secure, Eliminate Single point of failure (SPOF), Power, Cooling, 24x7 operations and maintainability. Proper planning and design is required to construct a facility that will be secure, defendable and cost effective. This embraces several key principles in the site location, building selection, floor layout, electrical system design, mechanical design, and the concept of modularity that enables the data center facility to change and adapt as needed, with minimum renovation and change to basic building systems. A few of the vital requirements for a data center are as follows.

Site Location

The site should be in a safe area that is not subject to any natural environmental dangers such as flood planes or an area subject to landslides. If the building is subject to a sustained period of heavy rain or localized flooding, there should be enough resistance to water penetration and adequate drainage. Calamities like hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes can not only impact the facility but also the overall area’s utilities, services and traffic patterns which will affect data center operations.  Apart from environmental dangers other locations such as chemical plants, stadiums, townships, airports, etc. should also be avoided. The site should be easily accessible for equipment delivery.

Power & Cooling Systems

A desired site location should be able to get power from multiple providers and redundant power grids. If a system becomes unavailable, company operations may be suspended or stopped completely. In order to minimize any chance of disruption, it is necessary to provide reliable power for IT operations. Backup power generators should also be available in case of any outage in regular power supply or maintenance. Essentials of the power infrastructure include the electrical service entrance of the building, main distribution, generators, Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) systems and batteries, surge protection, transformers, distribution panels, and circuit breakers.

Since tens of thousands of servers and other network equipment will be running round the clock, huge amount of heat will be dispersed in data center which will have adverse effects to both the data center and the environment. Proper cooling systems should be installed to prevent the heat from affecting the equipment and surroundings.  Systems that remove heat from the data center include computer room air conditioners (CRACs) and their associated subsystems—chillers, cooling towers, condensers, duct work, exhausts, pump packages, piping and rack or row-level cooling or air distribution devices.

Security

Since a data center holds huge amount of data of various customers and companies, security is one of the paramount requirements of a data center. The data center should be equipped with several security systems such as “Man trap” entry using bio-metrics/card accesses, 24x7 security guards, CCTV and Recorders, Motion Detection, Hand Geometry Readers and Fiber Vault.