Effective mission critical installations must address the known problems and challenges relating to current and past data center designs. This paper presents a categorized and prioritized collection of rack system challenges and requirements as obtained through systematic user interviews. Read more now.

The management of physical infrastructure in data centers can no longer be considered independently of the IT management architecture. In order to manage rapid change and achieve demanded levels of availability while controlling Total Cost of Ownership, IT managers can no longer afford to rely on the primitive, customized management solutions of the past. These solutions are no longer effective and must be replaced by systems based on, and integrated with, open IT management standards. With this in mind, this paper describes the requirements for management of next-generation Network-Critical Physical Infrastructure from the perspective of the ITIL framework. Read more now.

The circumstances that gave rise to the development and use of the raised floor in the data center environment are examined. Many of the reasons for the raised floor no longer exist, and the problems associated with raised floors suggest that their widespread use is no longer justified or desirable for many applications. Read more now.

Organizing components and cables within high density enclosures need not be a stressful, time consuming chore. In fact, thanks to the flexibility of new enclosure designs, a standard for organizing enclosure space, including power and data cables can be easily implemented. This paper provides a five step roadmap for standardizing and optimizing organization within both low and high density enclosures, with special emphasis on how to plan for higher densities. Read more now.

Cooling for IT wiring closets is rarely planned and typically only implemented after failures or overheating occur. Historically, no clear standard exists for specifying sufficient cooling to achieve predictable behavior within wiring closets. An appropriate specification for cooling IT wiring closets should assure compatibility with anticipated loads, provide unambiguous instruction for design and installation of cooling equipment, prevent oversizing, maximize electrical efficiency, and be flexible enough to work in various shapes and types of closets. This paper describes the science and practical application of an improved method for the specification of cooling for wiring closets. Read more now.

Before data center infrastructure efficiency can be benchmarked using PUE or other metrics, there must be agreement on exactly what power consumptions constitute IT loads, what consumptions constitute physical infrastructure, and what loads should not be counted. Unfortunately, commonly published efficiency data is not computed using a standard methodology, and the same data center will have different efficiency ratings when different methodologies are applied. This paper explains the problem and describes a standardized method for classifying data center loads for efficiency calculations. Read more now.