Data center layout design is a challenging task requiring expertise, time, and effort. However, the data center can accommodate in-house servers and many other IT equipment for years if done properly. When designing such a modest facility for your company or cloud-service providers, doing everything correctly is crucial.

As such, data center designers should develop a thorough data center layout. A data center layout comes in handy during construction as it outlines the best possible placement of physical hardware and other resources in the center.

What Is Included in a Data Center Floor Plan?

The floor plan is an important part of the data center layout. Well-designed floor plan boosts the data centers’ cooling performance, simplifies installation, and reduces energy needs. Unfortunately, most data center floor plans are designed through incremental deployment that doesn’t follow a central plan. A data center floor plan influences the following:

• The power density of the data center
• The complexity of power and cooling distribution networks
• Achievable power density
• Electrical power usage of the data center

Below are a few tips to consider when designing a data center floor plan:

Balance Density with Capacity

“The more, the better” isn’t an applicable phrase when designing a data center. You should remember the tradeoff between space and power in data centers and consider your options keenly. If you are thinking of a dense server, ensure that you have enough budget. Note that a dense server requires more power and advanced cooling infrastructure. Designing a good floor plan allows you to figure this out beforehand.

Consider Unique Layouts

There is no specific rule that you should use old floor layouts. Your floor design should be based on specific organizational needs. If your company is growing exponentially, your data center needs will keep changing too. As such, old layouts may not be applicable. Browse through multiple layouts and find one that perfectly suits your facility.

Think About the Future

A data center design should be based on specific organizational needs. Therefore, while you may not need to install or replace some equipment yet, you might have to do so after a few years due to changing facility needs. Simply put, your data center should accommodate company needs several years in the future. This will ease expansion.

Floor Planning Sequence

A floor or system planning sequence outlines the flow of activity that transforms the initial idea into an installation plan. The floor planning sequence involves the following five tasks:

Determining IT Parameters

The floor plan begins with a general idea that prompts the company to change or increase its IT capabilities. From the idea, the data center’s capacity, growth plan, and criticality are then determined. Note that these three factors are characteristics of the IT function component of the data center and not the physical infrastructure supporting it. Since the infrastructure is the ultimate outcome of the planning sequence, these parameters guide the development and dictate the data centers’ physical infrastructure requirements.

Developing System Concept

This step uses the IT parameters as a foundation to formulate the general concept of data center physical infrastructure. The main goal is to develop a reference design that embodies the desired capacity, criticality, and scalability that supports future growth plans. However, with the diverse nature of these parameters, more than a thousand physical infrastructure systems can be drawn. Designers should pick a few “good” designs from this library.

Determining User Requirements

User requirements should include organizational needs that are specific to the project. This phase should collect and evaluate organizational needs to determine if they are valid or need some adjustments to avoid problems and reduce costs. User requirements can include key features, prevailing IT constraints, logistical constraints, target capacity, etc.

Generating Specifications

This step takes user requirements and translates them into detailed data center design. Specifications provide a baseline for rules that should be followed in the last step, creating a detailed design. Specifications can be:

• Standard specifications – these don’t vary from one project to another. They include regulatory compliance, workmanship, best practices, safety, etc.
• User specifications – define user-specific details of the project.

Generating a Detailed Design

This is the last step of the floor planning sequence that highlights:

• A detailed list of the components
• Exact floor plan with racks, including power and cooling systems
• Clear installation instructions
• Project schedule

If the complete specifications are clear enough and robust, a detailed design can be automatically drawn. However, this requires input from professional engineers.

Principles of Equipment Layout

Datacenter infrastructure is the core of the entire IT architecture. Unfortunately, despite this importance, more than 70% of network downtime stems from physical layer problems, particularly cabling. Planning an effective data center infrastructure is crucial to the data center’s performance, scalability, and resiliency.

Nonetheless, keep the following principles in mind when designing equipment layout.

Control Airflow Using Hot-aisle/Cold-aisle Rack Layout

The principle of controlling airflow using a hot-aisle/cold-aisle rack layout is well defined in various documents, including the ASHRAE TC9.9 Mission Critical Facilities. This principle aims to maximize the separation of IT equipment exhaust air and fresh intake air by placing cold aisles where intakes are present and hot aisles where exhaust air is released. This reduces the amount of hot air drawn through the equipment’s air intake. Doing this allows data centers to achieve power densities of up to 100%.

Provide Safe and Convenient Access Ways

Besides being a legal requirement, providing safe and convenient access ways around data center equipment is common sense. The effectiveness of a data center depends on how row layouts can double up as aisles and access ways. Therefore, designers should factor in the impact of column locations. A column can take up three or more rack locations if it falls within the row of racks. This can obstruct the aisle and lead to the complete elimination of the row.

Align Equipment With Floor and Ceiling Tile Systems

Floor and ceiling tiling systems also play a role in air distribution systems. The floor grille should align with racks, especially in data centers with raised floor plans. Misaligning floor grids and racks can compromise airflow significantly.

You should also align the ceiling tile grid to the floor grid. As such, you shouldn’t design or install the floor until the equipment layout has been established.

Plan the Layout in Advance

The first stages of deploying data center equipment heavily determine subsequent stages and final equipment installation. Therefore, it is better to plan the entire data center floor layout beforehand.

How to Plan a Server Rack Installation

Server racks should be designed to allow easy and secure access to IT servers and networking devices. Whether you are installing new server racks or thinking of expanding, consider the following:

Rack Location

When choosing a rack for your data center, you should consider its location in the room. It should also leave enough space in the sides, front, rear, and top for easy access and airflow. As a rule of thumb, a server rack should occupy at least six standard floor tiles. Don’t install server racks and cabinets below or close to air conditioners to protect them from water damage in case of leakage.

Rack Layout

Rack density should be considered when determining the rack layout. More free space within server racks allows for more airflow. As such, you can leave enough vertical space between servers and IT devices to boost cooling. Since hot air rises, place heat-sensitive devices, such as UPS batteries, at the bottom of server racks, heavy devices should also be placed at the bottom.

Cable Layout

Well-planned rack layout is more than a work of art. Similarly, an excellent cable layout should leverage cable labeling and management techniques to ease the identification of power and network cables. Cables should have markings at both ends for easy identification. Avoid marking them in the middle. Your cable management system should also have provisions for future additions or removal.

Conclusion

Designing a data center layout is challenging for both small and established IT facilities. Building or upgrading data centers is often perceived to be intimidating and difficult. However, developing a detailed data center layout can ease everything. Remember that small changes in the plan during installation lead to costly consequences downstream.

Article Source: Data Center Layout

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The Most Common Data Center Design Missteps

Over the past decade, data center containment has experienced a high rate of implementation by many data centers. It can greatly improve the predictability and efficiency of traditional data center cooling systems. This article will elaborate on what data center containment is, common types of it, and their benefits and challenges.

What Is Data Center Containment?

Data center containment is the separation of cold supply air from the hot exhaust air from IT equipment so as to reduce operating cost, optimize power usage effectiveness, and increase cooling capacity. Containment systems enable uniform and stable supply air temperature to the intake of IT equipment and a warmer, drier return air to cooling infrastructure.

Types of Data Center Containment

There are mainly two types of data center containment, hot aisle containment and cold aisle containment.

Hot aisle containment encloses warm exhaust air from IT equipment in data center racks and returns it back to cooling infrastructure. The air from the enclosed hot aisle is returned to cooling equipment via a ceiling plenum or duct work, and then the conditioned air enters the data center via raised floor, computer room air conditioning (CRAC) units, or duct work.

Cold aisle containment encloses cold aisles where cold supply air is delivered to cool IT equipment. So the rest of the data center becomes a hot-air return plenum where the temperature can be high. Physical barriers such as solid metal panels, plastic curtains, or glass are used to allow for proper airflow through cold aisles.

Hot Aisle vs. Cold Aisle

There are mixed views on whether it’s better to contain the hot aisle or the cold aisle. Both containment strategies have their own benefits as well as challenges.

Hot aisle containment benefits

• The open areas of the data center are cool, so that visitors to the room will not think the IT equipment is not being cooled sufficiently. In addition, it allows for some low density areas to be un-contained if desired.
• It is generally considered to be more effective. Any leakages that come from raised floor openings in the larger part of the room go into the cold space.
• With hot aisle containment, low-density network racks and stand-alone equipment like storage cabinets can be situated outside the containment system, and they will not get too hot, because they are able to stay in the lower temperature open areas of the data center.
• Hot aisle containment typically adjoins the ceiling where fire suppression is installed. With a well-designed space, it will not affect normal operation of a standard grid fire suppression system.

Hot aisle containment challenges

• It is generally more expensive. A contained path is needed for air to flow from the hot aisle all the way to cooling units. Often a drop ceiling is used as return air plenum.
• High temperatures in the hot aisle can be undesirable for data center technicians. When they need to access IT equipment and infrastructure, a contained hot aisle can be a very uncomfortable place to work. But this problem can be mitigated using temporary local cooling.

Cold aisle containment benefits

• It is easy to implement without the need for additional architecture to contain and return exhaust air such as a drop ceiling or air plenum.
• Cold aisle containment is less expensive to install as it only requires doors at ends of aisles and baffles or roof over the aisle.
• Cold aisle containment is typically easier to retrofit in an existing data center. This is particularly true for data centers that have overhead obstructions such as existing duct work, lighting and power, and network distribution.

Cold aisle containment challenges

• When utilizing a cold aisle system, the rest of the data center becomes hot, resulting in high return air temperatures. It also may create operational issues if any non-contained equipment such as low-density storage is installed in the general data center space.
• The conditioned air that leaks from the openings under equipment like PDUs and raised floor tend to enter air paths that return to cooling units. This reduces the efficiency of the system.
• In many cases, cold aisles have intermediate ceilings over the aisle. This may affect the overall fire protection and lighting design, especially when added to an existing data center.

How to Choose the Best Containment Option?

Every data center is unique. To find the most suitable option, you have to take into account a number of aspects. The first thing is to evaluate your site and calculate the Cooling Capacity Factor (CCF) of the computer room. Then observe the unique layout and architecture of each computer room to discover conditions that make hot aisle or cold aisle containment preferable. With adequate information and careful consideration, you will be able to choose the best containment option for your data center.

Article Source: Data Center Containment: Types, Benefits & Challenges

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The COVID-19 pandemic caused several companies to shut down, and the implications were reduced production and altered supply chains. In the tech world, where silicon microchips are the heart of everything electronic, raw material shortage became a barrier to new product creation and development.

During the lockdown periods, some essential workers were required to stay home, which meant chip manufacturing was unavailable for several months. By the time lockdown was lifted and the world embraced the new normal, the rising demand for consumer and business electronics was enough to ripple up the supply chain.

Below, we’ve discussed the challenges associated with the current chip shortage, what to expect moving forward, and the possible interventions necessary to overcome the supply chain constraints.

Challenges Caused by the Current Chip Shortage

As technology and rapid innovation sweeps across industries, semiconductor chips have become an essential part of manufacturing – from devices like switches, wireless routers, computers, and automobiles to basic home appliances.

To understand and quantify the impact this chip shortage has caused spanning the industry, we’ll need to look at some of the most affected sectors. Here’s a quick breakdown of how things have unfolded over the last eighteen months.

Automobile Industry

in North America and Europe had slowed or stopped production due to a lack of computer chips. Major automakers like Tesla, Ford, BMW, and General Motors have all been affected. The major implication is that the global automobile industry will manufacture 4 million fewer cars by the end of 2021 than earlier planned, and it will forfeit an average of $110 billion in revenue.

Consumer Electronics

Consumer electronics such as desktop PCs and smartphones rose in demand throughout the pandemic, thanks to the shift to virtual learning among students and the rise in remote working. At the start of the pandemic, several automakers slashed their vehicle production forecasts before abandoning open semiconductor chip orders. And while the consumer electronics industry stepped in and scooped most of those microchips, the supply couldn’t catch up with the demand.

Data Centers

Most chip fabrication companies like Samsung Foundries, Global Foundries, and TSMC prioritized high-margin orders from PC and data center customers during the pandemic. And while this has given data centers a competitive edge, it isn’t to say that data centers haven’t been affected by the global chip shortage.

Some of the components data centers have struggled to source include those needed to put together their data center switching systems. These include BMC chips, capacitors, resistors, circuit boards, etc. Another challenge is the extended lead times due to wafer and substrate shortages, as well as reduced assembly capacity.

LED Lighting

LED backlights common in most display screens are powered by hard-to-find semiconductor chips. The prices of gadgets with LED lighting features are now highly-priced due to the shortage of raw materials and increased market demand. This is expected to continue up to the beginning of 2022.

Renewable Energy- Solar and Turbines

Renewable energy systems, particularly solar and turbines, rely on semiconductors and sensors to operate. The global supply chain constraints have hurt the industry and even forced some energy solutions manufacturers like Enphase Energy to

Semiconductor Trends: What to Expect Moving Forward

In response to the global chip shortage, several component manufacturers have ramped up production to help mitigate the shortages. However, top electronics and semiconductor manufacturers say the crunch will only worsen before it gets better. Most of these industry leaders speculate that the semiconductor shortage could persist into 2023.

Based on the ongoing disruption and supply chain volatility, various analysts in a recent CNBC article and Bloomberg interview echoed their views, and many are convinced that the coming year will be challenging. Here are some of the key takeaways:

Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel Corp., noted in April 2021 that the chip shortage would recover after a couple of years.

DigiTimes Report found that Intel and AMD server ICs and data centers have seen their lead times extend to 45 to 66 weeks.

The world’s third-largest EMS and OEM provider, Flex Ltd., expects the global semiconductor shortage to proceed into 2023.

In May 2021, Global Foundries, the fourth-largest contract semiconductor manufacturer, signed a $1.6 billion, 3-year silicon supply deal with AMD, and in late June, it launched its new $4 billion, 300mm-wafer facility in Singapore. Yet, the company says its production capacity will only increase component production earliest in 2023.

TMSC, one of the leading pure-play foundries in the industry, says it won’t meaningfully increase the component output until 2023. However, it’s optimistic that the company will ramp up the fabrication of automotive micro-controllers by 60% by the end of 2021.

From the industry insights above, it’s evident that despite the many efforts that major players put into resolving the global chip shortage, the bottlenecks will probably persist throughout 2022.

Additionally, some industry observers believe that the move by big tech companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google to design their own chips for cloud and data center business could worsen the chip shortage crisis and other problems facing the semiconductor industry.

article, the authors hint that the entry of Microsoft, Amazon, and Google into the chip design market will be a turning point in the industry. These tech giants have the resources to design superior and cost-effective chips of their own, something most chip designers like Intel have in limited proportions.

Since these tech giants will become independent, each will be looking to create component stockpiles to endure long waits and meet production demands between inventory refreshes. Again, this will further worsen the existing chip shortage.

Possible Solutions

To stay ahead of the game, major industry players such as chip designers and manufacturers and the many affected industries have taken several steps to mitigate the impacts of the chip shortage.

For many chip makers, expanding their production capacity has been an obvious response. Other suppliers in certain regions decided to stockpile and limit exports to better respond to market volatility and political pressures.

Similarly, improving the yields or increasing the number of chips manufactured from a silicon wafer is an area that many manufacturers have invested in to boost chip supply by some given margin.

Here are the other possible solutions that companies have had to adopt:

Embracing flexibility to accommodate older chip technologies that may not be “state of the art” but are still better than nothing.

Leveraging software solutions such as smart compression and compilation to build efficient AI models to help unlock hardware capabilities.

LED Lighting

The latest global chip shortage has led to severe shocks in the semiconductor supply chain, affecting several industries from automobile, consumer electronics, data centers, LED, and renewables.

Industry thought leaders believe that shortages will persist into 2023 despite the current build-up in mitigation measures. And while full recovery will not be witnessed any time soon, some chip makers are optimistic that they will ramp up fabrication to contain the demand among their automotive customers.

That said, staying ahead of the game is an all-time struggle considering this is an issue affecting every industry player, regardless of size or market position. Expanding production capacity, accommodating older chip technologies, and leveraging software solutions to unlock hardware capabilities are some of the promising solutions.

Added

This article is being updated continuously. If you want to share any comments on FS switches, or if you are inclined to test and review our switches, please email us via media@fs.com or inform us on social media platforms. We cannot wait to hear more about your ideas on FS switches.

Article Source: The Chip Shortage: Current Challenges, Predictions, and Potential Solutions

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Infographic – What Is a Data Center?

Introduction

Data center design is to provide IT equipment with a high-quality, standard, safe, and reliable operating environment, fully meeting the environmental requirements for stable and reliable operation of IT devices and prolonging the service life of computer systems. Data center design is the most important part of data center construction directly relating to the success or failure of data center long term planning, so its design should be professional, advanced, integral, flexible, safe, reliable, and practical.

9 Missteps in Data Center Design

Data center design is one of the effective solutions to overcrowded or outdated data centers, while inappropriate design results in obstacles for growing enterprises. Poor planning can lead to a waste of valuable funds and more issues, increasing operating expenses. Here are 9 mistakes to be aware of when designing a data center.

Miscalculation of Total Cost

Data center operation expense is made up of two key components: maintenance costs and operating costs. Maintenance costs refer to the costs associated with maintaining all critical facility support infrastructure, such as OEM equipment maintenance contracts, data center cleaning fees, etc. Operating costs refer to costs associated with day-to-day operations and field personnel, such as the creation of site-specific operational documentation, capacity management, and QA/QC policies and procedures. If you plan to build or expand a business-critical data center, the best approach is to focus on three basic parameters: capital expenditures, operating and maintenance expenses, and energy costs. Taking any component out of the equation, you might face the case that the model does not properly align an organization’s risk profile and business spending profile.

Unspecified Planning and Infrastructure Assessment

Infrastructure assessment and clear planning are essential processes for data center construction. For example, every construction project needs to have a chain of command that clearly defines areas of responsibility and who is responsible for aspects of data center design. Those who are involved need to evaluate the potential applications of the data center infrastructure and what types of connectivity requirements they need. In general, planning involves a rack-by-rack blueprint, including network connectivity and mobile devices, power requirements, system topology, cooling facilities, virtual local and on-premises networks, third-party applications, and operational systems. For the importance of data center design, you should have a thorough understanding of the functionality before it begins. Otherwise, you’ll fall short and cost more money to maintain.

Inappropriate Design Criteria

Two missteps can send enterprises into an overspending death spiral. First of all, everyone has different design ideas, but not everyone is right. Second, the actual business is mismatched with the desired vision and does not support the setting of kilowatts per square foot or rack. Over planning in design is a waste of capital. Higher-level facilities also result in higher operational and energy costs. A data center designer establishes the proper design criteria and performance characteristics and then builds capital expenditure and operating expenses around it.

Unsuitable Data Center Site

Enterprises often need to find a perfect building location when designing a data center. If you don’t get some site-critical information, it will lead to some cases. Large users are well aware of the data center and have concerns about power availability and cost, fiber optics, and irresistible factors. Baseline users often have business model shells in their core business areas that decide whether they need to build or refurbish. Hence, premature site selection or unreasonable geographic location will fail to meet the design requirements.

Pre-design Space Planning

It is also very important to plan the space capacity inside the data center. The raised floor to support ratio can be as high as 1 to 1, while the mechanical and electrical equipment needs enough space to accommodate. In addition, the planning of office and IT equipment storage areas also needed to be considered. Therefore, it is very critical to estimate and plan the space capacity during data center design. Estimation errors can make the design of a data center unsuitable for the site space, which means suspending project re-evaluation and possibly repurchasing components.

Mismatched Business Goals

Enterprises need to clearly understand their business goals when debugging a data center so that they can complete the data center design. After meeting the business goals, something should be considered, such as which specific applications the data center supports, additional computing power, and later business expansion. Additionally, enterprises need to communicate these goals to data center architects, engineers, and builders to ensure that the overall design meets business needs.

Design Limitations

The importance of modular design is well-publicized in the data center industry. Although the modular approach refers to adding extra infrastructure in an immediate mode to preserve capital, it doesn’t guarantee complete success. Modular and flexible design is the key to long-term stable operation, also meets your data center plans. On the power system, you have to take note of adding UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) capacity to existing modules without system disruption. Input and output distribution system design shouldn’t be overlooked, it can allow the data center to adapt to any future changes in the underlying construction standards.

Improper Data Center Power Equipment

To design a data center to maximize equipment uptime and reduce power consumption, you must choose the right power equipment based on the projected capacity. Typically, you might use redundant computing to predict triple server usage to ensure adequate power, which is a waste. Long-term power consumption trends are what you need to consider. Install automatic power-on generators and backup power sources, and choose equipment that can provide enough power to support the data center without waste.

Over-complicated Design

In many cases, redundant targets introduce some complexity. If you add multiple ways to build a modular system, things can quickly get complicated. The over-complexity of data center design means more equipment and components, and these components are the source of failure, which can cause problems such as:

• Human error. Data statistics errors lead to system data vulnerability and increase operational risks.
• Expensive. In addition to equipment and components, the maintenance of components failure also incurs more charges.
• Design concept. If maintainability wasn’t considered by the data center design when the IT team has the requirements of operating or servicing, system operational normality even human security get impacts.

Conclusion

Avoid the nine missteps above to find design solutions for data center IT infrastructure and build a data center that suits your business. Data center design missteps have some impacts on enterprises, such as business expansion, infrastructure maintenance, and security risks. Hence, all infrastructure facilities and data center standards must be rigorously estimated during data center design to ensure long-term stable operation within a reasonable budget.

Article Source: The Most Common Data Center Design Missteps

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