Strategic decisions plentiful when building data centers
Building a data center can be extremely complex, making strategic design decisions a key part of the construction process.
By Max BurkhalterAugust 13, 2012
Designing and constructing data centers is an incredibly complex process that often involves months, if not years, of planning. There are so many issues that have to be considered, ranging from geographical concerns to facility technologies and the actual IT infrastructure, when planning a new facility that the process of aligning diverse strategies can be difficult. According to a recent ZDNet report, it is not uncommon for organizations to miss a few of the key areas that have to be considered when building a new data center. However, there are a few aspects of design that have to be thought of by any organization hoping to develop an efficient facility.
One of the most important strategies needed when implementing a new data center is to identify what the uptime requirements of the facility will need to be. If the occasional outage created by power downtime, server failure or network unavailability is acceptable, the data center will end up looking very different than if services need to be kept available at an extremely high rate. The report explained that availability is one of the defining aspects of a data center and should be a key priority when working on a project.
Organizations also have to closely analyze the environmental conditions in the region where they are building the new data center, the news source explained. Areas that are especially hot demand high-performance cooling systems to keep equipment running at optimal temperatures. If the region is overly humid, technologies are needed to support moisture control. Earthquakes, hurricanes and other natural disasters can also impact data center design, as facilities can be designed to withstand such issues when necessary.
Another location-related issue is how far the data center is from the corporate office. Will IT workers have to travel between the office and the data center? If the utility grid powering the office goes down, will the data center also lose power, compounding the issue? These kinds of questions have to be answered when developing a new data center.
However, businesses should not let distance between the data center and office prevent them from optimizing the facility. Console server infrastructure can provide a foundation for remote management, which allows IT to manage the facility primarily through service consoles housed in offices or supported through mobile applications. This enables organizations to build their data centers in the best strategic location without having to worry as much about excess travel issues that stem from maintenance requirements.
Perle’s wide range of 1 to 48 port Perle Console Servers provide data center managers and network administrators with secure remote management of any device with a serial console port. Plus, they are the only truly fault tolerant Console Servers on the market with the advanced security functionality needed to easily perform secure remote data center management and out-of-band management of IT assets from anywhere in the world.
One of the most important strategies needed when implementing a new data center is to identify what the uptime requirements of the facility will need to be. If the occasional outage created by power downtime, server failure or network unavailability is acceptable, the data center will end up looking very different than if services need to be kept available at an extremely high rate. The report explained that availability is one of the defining aspects of a data center and should be a key priority when working on a project.
Organizations also have to closely analyze the environmental conditions in the region where they are building the new data center, the news source explained. Areas that are especially hot demand high-performance cooling systems to keep equipment running at optimal temperatures. If the region is overly humid, technologies are needed to support moisture control. Earthquakes, hurricanes and other natural disasters can also impact data center design, as facilities can be designed to withstand such issues when necessary.
Another location-related issue is how far the data center is from the corporate office. Will IT workers have to travel between the office and the data center? If the utility grid powering the office goes down, will the data center also lose power, compounding the issue? These kinds of questions have to be answered when developing a new data center.
However, businesses should not let distance between the data center and office prevent them from optimizing the facility. Console server infrastructure can provide a foundation for remote management, which allows IT to manage the facility primarily through service consoles housed in offices or supported through mobile applications. This enables organizations to build their data centers in the best strategic location without having to worry as much about excess travel issues that stem from maintenance requirements.
Perle’s wide range of 1 to 48 port Perle Console Servers provide data center managers and network administrators with secure remote management of any device with a serial console port. Plus, they are the only truly fault tolerant Console Servers on the market with the advanced security functionality needed to easily perform secure remote data center management and out-of-band management of IT assets from anywhere in the world.
