Facilitating Technology

Data center design is far from a cookie cutter proposition; most jobs are custom projects, varying greatly depending on the client’s line of business and need for system redundancy. A software company such as St. Paul–based Lawson Software will require a different type of center than a retailer or finance company, because the types of processing, technical architecture, and functions vary. Lawson might have greater need for research and development space as well; its software is frequently being tested for compatibility with different manufacturers’ hardware. A retail or finance company is more likely to standardize on one type of hardware and keep it for longer periods. The software company also will need an enhanced level of information security, since so many outside vendors are entering the facility to do hardware testing.

Hansen also must factor clients’ varying lifecycle management philosophies into center design. Some companies have a policy of replacing hardware as soon as its warranty expires, for example, while others might consider the average lifecycle of computer equipment to be three years, but not replace it until it’s five years old.

“The faster that companies refresh their hardware, the newer the processors arriving in that equipment, which requires more power running to the data center,” Hansen says. “That means higher density and greater cooling needs than [a company that] might not replace [its] hardware for five years.”

Over the past five years, centers that were largely horizontal in design have been replaced by those with vertical, rack-mounted configurations featuring blade servers. In that time, power density has grown from about 40 watts per square foot, Hansen says, to today’s average of 100 to 125 watts per square foot, with the prospect of 300 watts not far down the road. That has complicated design.

“That type of power density gets to a point where the way we have cooled data centers in the past no longer works, because you simply can’t get enough air to the racks to cool them,” he says. Cooling is a big issue for IT professionals because high temperatures can shorten equipment lifespan and cause data center downtime.

Flexibility for the Future

Another of Hansen’s challenges is getting clients to look ahead when planning their data centers. If a center is using five kilowatts per server rack today, and five years from now it might be 20 kilowatts per rack, “you don’t want to have to buy all of that mechanical or electrical infrastructure until you really need to because it’s not a good use of capital,” Hansen says. “But you also need to think hard about what kind of capacity you might need in the future and build that into space planning.”

When N’compass consulted with St. Jude Medical on its data center, the organization had just experienced three consecutive years of 60 percent growth. N’compass ultimately recommended a flexible, three-phase IT growth plan that involved an initial build out of the main data center plus the prospect of phase two and phase three expansions should growth continue.