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As a business you may be planning a new data centre, whether that be a Micro, Enterprise or Hyperscale Data Centre, however it is important to remember that a good design is important to creating and maintaining highly efficient mission critical infrastructure.
Investment in infrastructure is expensive, so it makes sense that companies should always look to generate maximum output from its resources, particularly as business needs’ dictate an 100% reliability approach to data accessibility – downtime is not an option.
An area that is often overlooked is the data centre design which can have an enormous impact, resulting in cost savings, greater ability to scale and reduced environmental impact.
At Workspace Technology we understand the technical and commercial risks involved with Data Centre projects. Our unique, 360 Pentagon approach combines strategy and business case development with the key disciplines of IT, Critical Data Centre Systems, Engineering Infrastructure, Security and data centre operational excellence.
Our team of expert Data Centre Consultants will work alongside Data Centre Managers to create a robust Data Centre strategy aligned to business goals ensuring that Data Centre facilities are agile and adaptable to change. By listening to clients, and taking the time to understand their current and future I.T requirements and objectives as well as their business objectives, we ensure that the Data Centre strategy will support the business's present and future needs in a cost efficient fashion.
Of course, there is a price for quality consultancy advice, but it can be more costly without it!
There are a few things to consider when designing your data centre;
Data Centre Due Diligence
Before you commence designing your data centre you need to ascertain what you require, now and potentially need in the future. By undertaking an audit of your current facility and considering your future needs, external consultancy services can provide an independent and holistic review of your facility and associated operational procedures, helping to uncover any risks and potential compliance issues. With the help of qualified, expert data centre consultants the risk of overprovisioning can be reduced whilst resulting in a fit-for-purpose data centre facility that is scalable to meet future operational plans.
Operational Excellence
As, the Data Centre is gradually populated, the need to optimise the operation of the Data Centre infrastructure and improve its energy efficiency is essential from an environmental and financial perspective. It’s important to integrate information systems to monitor, record and analyse operational aspects of the data centre infrastructure and to use this information to further improve energy and operational performance.
A large proportion of data centre outages and out-of-control costs can be directly tied to the power and cooling that a data centre uses. If cooling is implemented poorly, the power required to cool a data centre can match or exceed the power used to run the IT equipment itself.
In order to address this issue an organisation should control airflow and cooling via containment and active airflow management that provides modular power and cooling which scales with demand/expansion. Then they should implement monitoring systems to ensure they are keeping costs low and heading off any potential issues before they become problems.
DCIM - Management System Implementation
Taking all the above into consideration, it becomes clear that spreadsheets and other manual approaches cannot keep up with the changes occurring in a modern data centre. In order to perform accurate capacity planning and keep precise records for optimising and maintaining the design, a company should deploy a comprehensive and modern Data Centre Infrastructure Management (DCIM) solution that can help to address all the above.
This system not only provides a holistic view of the data centre but also provides robust reporting and analytics. DCIM solutions have become ubiquitous in the data centre and hybrid compute infrastructure and deemed necessary with the complex rapidly changing technology footprint.
With companies relying heavily on access to data and IT systems, power outages as well as data downtime is not an option, particularly as data centres evolve in-line with the proliferation of connected devices and wider digital transformation. Therefore, before writing that tender or placing an order for your mission critical infrastructure, take the time to consider the price you’ll pay if you skip the crucial consultancy stage.
Our team of Consultants are on hand to help you, why not contact us to find out more.