APPROACHING THE DATA CENTER PROJECT Dr. Natheer Khasawneh

APPROACHING THE DATA CENTER PROJECT Dr. Natheer Khasawneh

Value of Your Data Center Data Centers are specialized environments that safeguard your company's most valuable equipment and intellectual property. Data Centers house the devices that do the following: Process your business transactions Host your website Process and store your intellectual property Maintain your financial records Route your e-mails

Data Center Brain of your company Your business' ability to: Perceive the world (data connectivity) Communicate (e-mail) Remember information (data storage) Have new ideas (research and development) How to: Secure the brain Help it function efficiently Develop its full potential for your business

What do you need to know? Physical design and construction of a Data Center How to customize the environment to meet your company's needs How to organize and manage your Data Center effectively so downtime is minimized, troubleshooting is easier, and the room's infrastructure is fully used

So, how much is acceptable to spend on the construction of your Data Center? That depends. To determine the answer, you need to know the value of what your Data Center is protecting.

Shall I simply outsource? What is outsource? Rent server environment space from an outside company. Colocation facility Type of data center where equipment space and bandwidth are available for rental to retail customers. Colocation facilities provide space, power, cooling, and physical security for the server, storage, and networking equipment of other firms—and connect them to a variety of telecommunications and network service providers. (from wikipedia) How much does it cost? Costs for an outsourced Data Center are usually dictated by the amount of floor and rack space your servers occupy, how much power they draw, and what level of connectivity and staff support they require.

Things to consider: Ownership Responsibility Access Up-front costs

Why not to outsource? Server environment contains my company's most valuable items and handles our business critical functions so you want your own employees to be its caretakers. No one can know your company's server environment needs like you own people who are dedicated to supporting it, No matter how good an outside vendor is, it does not have a personal stake in making sure that your Data Center runs correctly the way that your and your coworkers do.

Outsource if: You have a short-term need for a server environment, perhaps until a permanent Data Center is constructed You want a standby facility ready to take over for a primary Data Center in the event of a catastrophic event.

You still want to outsource! Then do not drop the course. You need to: Know what types of infrastructure you want the facility to have to support your servers Foresee what challenges even your rented space might face. Be prepared for the day when you may want to build your own Data Center.

Defining Requirements and Roles You need to identify the requirements of your data center Also, you need to identify the roles and relationship between different employees.

Purpose of building data center Why is your company building this Data Center? What needs must it meet? What specific functions does it need to perform, and perform well, to be considered a success? What level of availability does your business require?

Roles and relationship Delineate which departments and people are responsible for what tasks Who designs the Data Center's electrical infrastructure, for example? An IT person who manages the room and knows about the incoming server equipment? A facilities person experienced with electrical systems? An outside architect knowledgeable about regional building codes?

Understanding Client Needs Talk to the people who work in the room(your client), and find out the following: What servers they want it to support How much connectivity those devices need What their power requirements are Whether clients see trends among the equipment they are ordering most commonly Focus on current needs along with future needs. Clients knows well their current needs. Clients may do not have any idea about future needs.

Cross-Functional Support Responsibility for a company's Data Center is typically shared among multiple departments and personnel. Example: Security manager typically governs physical access into the Data Center. IT manager coordinates where servers are physically deployed. Each one has different point of view with regards to security access. Solution: Foster communication and seek compromise

Architecting a Productive Data Center In order to have well designed data center you need to follow five essential design strategy: Make It Robust Make It Modular Make It Flexible Standardize Promote Good Habits

Make It Robust Above all, your Data Center has to be reliable. Its overarching reason for existence is safeguarding your company's most critical equipment and applications. Regardless of what catastrophes happen you want your Data Center up and running so your business continues to operate. Data Center infrastructure must have depth: standby power supplies to take over when commercial electricity fails, and redundant network stations to handle the communication needs if a networking device malfunctions. The infrastructure must be configured so there is no single component or feature that makes it vulnerable. It does little good to have multiple standby power systems if they are all wired through a single circuit, or to have redundant data connections if their cable runs all enter the building at one location. In both examples, a malfunction at a single point can bring the entire Data Center offline.

Make It Modular Your Data Center must not only have a depth of infrastructure, it must also have breadth. You want sufficient power, data, and cooling throughout the room so that incoming servers can be deployed according to a logical master plan, not at the mercy of wherever there happens to be enough electrical outlets or data ports to support them. To achieve this uniform infrastructure, design the room in interchangeable segments. Stock server cabinet locations with identical infrastructure and then arrange those locations in identical rows. Modularity keeps your Data Center infrastructure simple and scalable. It also provides redundancy, on a smaller scale, as the standby systems mentioned previously. If a component fails in one section of the Data Center, users can simply plug in to the same infrastructure in another area and immediately be operational again.

Make It Flexible It is safe to assume that routers, switches, servers, and data storage devices will advance and change in the coming years. They may become smaller or bigger. Data Centers are not static, so their infrastructure should not be either. Design for flexibility. Build infrastructure systems using components that are easily changed or moved. Inflexible infrastructure invariably leads to more expense down the road. Part of a Data Center's flexibility also comes from whether it has enough of a particular type of infrastructure to handle an increased need in the future.

Standardize Make the Data Center a consistent environment. This provides stability for the servers and networking equipment it houses, and increases its usability. When building a new facility, it might be tempting to try something different, to experiment with an alternate design philosophy or implement new technology. If there are new solutions that truly provide quantifiable benefits, then by all means use them. Do not tinker with the design just to tinker, though. Once you find a design model or infrastructure component that provides the functions and features you are looking for, make it your standard. Avoid variety for variety's sake. The more complex the environment, the greater the chance that someone will misunderstand the infrastructure and make a mistake, most likely in an emergency.

Promote Good Habits Data Center should be engineered to encourage desirable behavior. Incorporating the right conveniences into the Data Center and eliminating the wrong ones definitely make the space easier to manage. Data Center users are busy people. They are looking for the fastest solution to their problems.

Examples of Good Habits Construct a nearby Build Room where system administrators can unbox servers to keep the Data Center free of boxes and pallets Make primary Data Center aisles larger than those between server rows, creating an obvious path for users to follow when rolling refrigerator-sized servers through the room for deployment. Install wall-mounted telephones with long receiver cords throughout the Data Center if you are concerned about interference from cellular phones and want to reduce their usage. Provide pre-tested patch cords to promote standardized cabling practices.

Data Center Ergonomics Make things accessible— This means putting items close by that Data Center users need to perform their job. It also means designing work areas, say within an electrical panel or where data cabling terminates, to be free of clutter. Choose simple over complex— The more straightforward a Data Center's details are, the less chance there is for someone to make a mistake and perhaps cause an outage. Following this principle can influence how you arrange server equipment and major infrastructure in the room. Remove mystery— If there is a chance someone might not understand an element of a Data Center, add some form of written instructions—signage, labeling, or even maps. Consider human nature— People typically follow the path of least resistance. As suggested in the preceding section about making the Data Center intuitive, take this into account when designing the room. If you want someone to use a particular type and length patch cord, for example, you should provide them in the Data Center.

Data Center Components (Preview) Basic Data Center facility systems: Physical space Raised flooring In-room electrical Standby power Data cabling Cooling Fire suppression

Data Center Components Physical Space Physical space refers to the footprint that Data Center-related items occupy. This generally applies to the overall area of the Data Center and its associated spaces, such as electrical rooms or storage areas. On a smaller scale this might refer to key dimensions within the Data Center, such as the external measurements of a server cabinet or aisle clearances. Raised Flooring Raised flooring is an elevated grid system that is frequently installed in large Data Centers. Cooled air, electrical whips, and data cabling are routed through the space under the raised floor, promoting better air flow and enabling easier management of power and cable runs. Water pipes, fire suppressant cylinders, moisture detectors, and smoke detectors may be located here as well. Raised flooring can vary in height from a few inches to several feet, or a few centimeters to several meters. In extreme cases they are as tall as the story of a building, enabling workers to walk upright under the plenum. Regardless of their height, the floors are typically composed of standard 2 foot (60 centimeter) square floor tiles. The tiles can vary in weight, strength, and finish depending upon their use. Tiles featuring either small perforations or large cut-out sections are placed in key locations to enable pass-through of air and cabling between the areas above and below the floor. In-Room Electrical In-room electrical refers to all power-related facilities within the Data Center. This normally includes electrical panels, conduits, and several types of receptacles. Power to this system usually comes from an outside commercial power source, namely your local utility company, and is likely conditioned at the company site. Voltage varies from one country to another.

Data Center Components. Cont. Standby Power Standby power includes all backup power systems responsible for support of the Data Center's electrical load in the event that normal utility power fails for any reason. This system traditionally includes large batteries, known as an uninterruptible power source or uninterruptible power supply, and one or more generators. Cabling The cabling system is all structured cabling within the Data Center. Copper and fiber cabling are the typical media and are terminated via several types of connectors. Common components include fiber housings, patch panels, multimedia boxes, and data faceplates. Cabinets, raceways, and other items used to route structured cabling are also considered part of the cabling system. Users plug servers in to the Data Center's structured cabling system with pre-terminated patch cords. Cooling The cooling system refers to the chillers and air handlers used to regulate ambient temperature and control humidity within the Data Center. This system might incorporate the air conditioning system used to cool regular office space within the same building, known as house air, or might be independent of it. Individual server cabinets can also possess their own cooling measures, such as fans or water-cooling. Fire Suppression Fire suppression includes all devices associated with detecting or extinguishing a fire in the Data Center. The most obvious components are water-based sprinklers, gaseous fire suppression systems, and hand-held fire extinguishers. Others can include devices that detect smoke or measure air quality. Other Infrastructure Components There are also some infrastructure items that do not strictly fall under the prior categories but are commonly found in server environments. These include leak detection devices, seismic mitigation, and physical security controls such as card readers and security cameras.

Data Center Design Criteria How many layers of infrastructure should your Data Center possess? Will it be the only server environment for your company or one of several? Will the room house production servers and be a business-critical site or contain a minimum of equipment for disaster recovery purposes and serve as a failover location? How long is its initial construction expected to meet your company's needs? What is it all going to cost?

Data Center Design Criteria Availability Infrastructure Tiers One Room or Several? Life Span Budget Decisions

Data Center Design Criteria Availability: The degree to which Data Center devices function continuously is known as the room's availability or its uptime. Availability is represented as a percentage of time. How many days, hours, and minutes is the Data Center's electrical infrastructure operational and supplying power over a given time period

Data Center Design Criteria Infrastructure Tiers The higher the availability you want your Data Center to achieve, the more layers of infrastructure it must have. N capacity is the amount of infrastructure required to support all servers or networking devices in the Data Center, assuming that the space is filled to maximum capacity and all devices are functioning. N most commonly used when discussing standby power, cooling, and the room's network. N 1 infrastructure can support the Data Center at full server capacity and includes an additional component Alternately called a 2N or system-plus-system design, it involves fully doubling the required number of infrastructure components Even higher tiers exist or can be created: 3N, 4N, and so on.

Data Center Design Criteria One Room or Several? One large Data Center is simpler to manage than several smaller ones. Having only one server environment puts all of your eggs in one basket.

Life Span How long it is expected to support your company's needs without having to be expanded or retrofitted, or otherwise undergo major changes. The most effective strategy is to design a Data Center with a projected life span of a few years.

Budget Decisions It is no good to spend millions of dollars on a server environment to protect your company's assets if that cost drives your business into bankruptcy. The most obvious costs for a Data Center are labor and materials associated with its initial construction, which, even for a room smaller than 1000 square feet or 100 square meters, normally runs into hundreds of thousands of dollars. This includes: Initial construction Consulting fees Real estate Ongoing operational expenses

Budget Decisions It depends on the downtime cost The cost of a generic employee at your business and then multiply this by the length of the outage and by how many employees are unable to work during downtime/ For example, a generic employee costs your company a total of 150,000 a year. (Remember, this is all costs combined, not just salary.) That is about 60 an hour, assuming the employee works a traditional 40-hour work week, and 52-week calendar year. If your Data Center goes offline for two hours and stops the work of 100 employees at that site, that is 12,000 for that single outage. Or by calculating the revenue: Assume that your company typically brings in 1 million a year in online business. If the website accepts orders around the clock, then divide 1 million by 8760, the number of hours in a year. That works out to 114 an hour, which means that the four hours of downtime also disrupted about 500 in sales. Most difficult value of all to quantify comes from when a server crashes and data is destroyed. For example, intellectual property has been destroyed.

Managing a Data Center Project The Design Package A comprehensive Data Center design package template available at the book website.

Working with Experts The facilities manager— This person's specialty includes all mechanical devices within the Data Center infrastructure, from air handlers and power distribution units to fire sprinklers and standby generators. The IT manager— This person is responsible for the servers installed in the Data Center. The network engineer— This person designs, supports, and manages the Data Center's network. The Data Center manager— This person designs, supports, and manages the Data Center's physical architecture and oversees the layout and installation of incoming servers. The real estate manager or building planner— This person governs how company building space is used. In a Data Center project. The project manager— This person manages the Data Center construction project as a whole, including its budget, timelines, and supervision of outside contractors. The architectural firm— This outside company ensures that your Data Center design complies with local building codes. The general contractor— This person oversees and acts as a single point of contact for all other contractors on the project. The electrical contractor— This contractor installs, labels, and tests all of the Data Center's electrical and standby equipment. The mechanical contractor— This contractor installs and tests all of the Data Center's cooling equipment. Ducting is typically the contractor's responsibility as well. The cabling contractor—This contractor installs and tests all of the Data Center's structured cabling. Its staff also installs any racks or cabinets that cabling terminates into, and labels the room's cable runs.

Tips for a Successful Project Define expectations and communicate them early and often Expect long lead times on infrastructure items Establish deadline-based incentives for time-sensitive projects Document everything Visit the construction site frequently