How can you avoid common mistakes in data center design?

Oct 10, 2024

7 min read

Managing data center infrastructure can be an around-the-clock job. Your stakeholders are expecting 100% uptime, whether or not it is reasonable. Between backups, security, resource utilization, and replacements, you feel more like a firefighter than a System Admin. Establishing a plan can take the edge off the pressures of your responsibilities and avoiding common mistakes in your data center design.

How to Build a Data Center Data centers are the backbone of modern business operations, providing the necessary infrastructure for data storage, management, and processing. These facilities play a pivotal role in ensuring the smooth functioning of IT and communication systems, facilitating cloud computing, e-commerce, data analysis, and much more. Their importance has grown exponentially with the digital transformation of businesses, highlighting the need for reliable, efficient, and scalable data management solutions. Constructing a data center (or DC) involves a comprehensive approach, starting from the initial planning and design phase to the final implementation and operational stage. This guide outlines the essential steps on how to build a data center, aiming to equip IT professionals, data center managers, and businesses with the knowledge to create a facility that effectively meets their specific needs and supports their operations efficiently. Step 1: Assess Your Data Center Needs Defining the Purpose and Scope The foundation of a successful data center project lies in clearly defining its purpose and scope. This includes understanding the core functions the data center will serve, such as hosting websites, supporting cloud storage, or managing enterprise data. Identifying these objectives early on is crucial, as all subsequent planning and design decisions depend on effectively aligning with these goals. Plan Ahead: Identifying Requirements - Current and Future Data Storage Needs: The IT sector is witnessing a significant surge in data volumes, prompting manufacturers to unveil hard drives currently ranging from 22 TB consumer-grade drives to 50-plus TB units expected in 2026. Strategic foresight in planning is essential to accommodate this rapid evolution. - Processing Power and Network Bandwidth: The growth of cloud services, big data analytics, and machine learning models demands ever-increasing processing power and network bandwidth. Data centers must adapt to support higher data transmission rates and volumes at lower latency. - Growth Projections and Scalability Options: Anticipating future growth and ensuring scalability is crucial for long-term viability. Implementing modular design principles provides the agility needed to scale operations seamlessly. - Geographical Location of Clientele: Data sovereignty laws may dictate where data must be stored and processed, influencing site selection. Additionally, proximity to users affects performance; closer data centers reduce latency, improving user experience for time-sensitive applications. Properly evaluating both present and anticipated future needs is crucial for designing a data center that can grow with your business. This foresight prevents costly redesigns or expansions down the line. Power and Cooling Needs Analysis The selection and deployment of hardware dictate the power and cooling requirements of a data center. Efficient power usage and effective cooling systems are vital for operational integrity and sustainability. In the current landscape of an environmentally conscious IT industry, creative data center placement could potentially offset or even externalize some of these needs. Budgeting Creating a detailed budget is a critical step, encompassing: - Capital expenditures (CapEx) for infrastructure, equipment, and building costs. - Operational expenditures (OpEx) including energy, maintenance, and staffing. - A contingency plan for unexpected expenses ensures financial preparedness throughout the project. Step 2: Designing the Data Center Infrastructure Understanding Common Data Center Design and Infrastructure Standards There are various standards to base data center infrastructure design on: - Uptime Institute Tier Standard: Focuses on proper construction and dictates data center resiliency based on levels of redundancy and reliability. - EN 50600 Series: Emphasizes the importance of proper IT cable and network design. - ANSI/TIA 942-B and ANSI/BICSI 002-2019: Standards covering aspects from building trades to IT maintenance and cooling systems. Selecting a Location Choosing the right location is influenced by factors such as climate, geographical stability, and proximity to network backbones for connectivity. Creating a Floor Plan An efficient floor plan should: - Maximize space utilization. - Facilitate hardware installation and maintenance. - Support future expansion. - Be designed with accessibility in mind. Power Distribution and Backup Ensuring uninterrupted power involves robust power distribution networks, uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems, and backup generators for emergency situations. Cooling and HVAC Systems Designing effective cooling and HVAC systems is a crucial factor in achieving high energy efficiency. Effective cooling design involves a detailed analysis of the data center’s layout, heat load distribution, and climatic conditions. Security and Access Control Implementing comprehensive security measures, including physical barriers, surveillance systems, and biometric access controls, safeguards the data center against unauthorized access and potential breaches. Sustainable Design Principles Incorporating energy-efficient technologies and green practices, such as renewable energy sources and efficient cooling mechanisms, minimizes the environmental impact of data center operations. Step 3: Review Regulatory and Compliance Regulatory compliance ensures that the data center adheres to various laws and regulations regarding data privacy, security, and the overall operation of the business. Key regulations include GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, FISMA, and others. Step 4: Procuring Equipment and Infrastructure Evaluating Vendors and Suppliers Selecting reliable vendors involves assessing their product quality, support services, and alignment with your project’s requirements. Entangl's platform can help streamline the procurement process by identifying the most compatible vendors for your needs. Selecting Servers, Networking, and Racks Choosing the right mix of servers, networking equipment, and rack solutions is crucial for meeting performance and scalability requirements. Step 5: Installation and Configuration - Setting Up Racks and Cabinets: Proper installation involves considering weight distribution and future scalability. - Installing Hardware and Cable Management: Meticulously planning hardware installation ensures seamless integration. Effective cable management enhances airflow and simplifies maintenance. - Testing Equipment: Rigorous testing confirms operational readiness, including load testing and performance benchmarking. Step 6: Network and Connectivity - Establishing Internal Network Infrastructure: Setting up switches, routers, and firewalls to manage data flow and protect against intrusions. - Implementing Redundant Networking: Redundancy is critical for high availability and reliability. Step 7: Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning Disaster recovery planning ensures business continuity in case of emergencies. A robust plan covers components like redundant networking, secure external connections, and failover systems. Step 8: Environmental Impact and Sustainability Data centers are energy-intensive facilities. Incorporating sustainable practices and advanced cooling methodologies can significantly reduce their environmental impact. Entangl's AI-driven platform can assist in optimizing the energy efficiency of data centers, aligning operational needs with sustainability goals. Step 9: Cost Analysis and Future Trends Capital and Operational Expenditures Cost analysis includes factors such as land acquisition, construction, equipment costs, energy, and maintenance. Future Trends Emerging trends include edge computing, hybrid cloud models, automation, and AI. Leveraging these trends effectively positions data centers for future technological demands. Entangl's AI capabilities can play a role in automating data center operations, reducing human error, and optimizing resource utilization. Architecting the Data Ecosystems of the Future Building a data center is a complex project that demands careful planning, strategic decision-making, and meticulous execution. Each step, from assessing needs to installing and configuring infrastructure, contributes to creating a robust, efficient, and scalable data center. By integrating comprehensive IT management solutions and leveraging platforms like Entangl, data centers can achieve operational efficiency, scalability, and sustainability in a rapidly evolving digital landscape. — A data center

Identifying and applying data center challenges and solutions in cloud computing and on-prem operations is key to your IT success. By considering the following six common data center problems, you prepare yourself to recognize and address these issues before they impact your operations. Leveraging solutions like Entangl can help by providing AI-driven insights that identify potential problems early, optimize design decisions, and support effective management.

We will first focus on the top six data center challenges, namely:

- Data Center Design

- Power Supply Failure

- Environmental Issues

- Networking and Cabling

- Security

- Management

1. Data Center Design Issues – Infrastructure and Capacity Planning

The first step in data center design is to assess your current and future needs, such as the amount of space, power, cooling, network, storage, and compute resources you require. You should also consider the type of applications, workloads, and data you will run, as well as the expected growth rate, availability, and service level agreements. By conducting a thorough needs assessment, you can avoid overprovisioning or underprovisioning your data center, which can affect your performance, efficiency, and budget.

Some of the top data center challenges revolve around physical space within a data center. Whether it’s too little space, too much space, or excessive heat due to hardware proximity, poor planning for your data center physical infrastructure can have significant and lasting effects. See the failures of IT infrastructure capacity planning below, and explore how you can prevent them!

Insufficient Space for Expansion

The importance of sufficient space cannot be overstated.

- Is there room for expansion?

- Do planning regulations allow your center to expand up?

- Do the surroundings allow your data center to expand out?

A poor data center design may limit the future growth of your data center. Having to engage in a data center relocation due to unforeseen growth can have a major impact on business continuity and expenses.

Too Much Space After Equipment Refresh

When consolidating old and new servers, planners need to be aware that while new servers are smaller and have a smaller physical footprint, newer servers need significantly more power with their higher energy consumption. There are differences in the demands of virtual servers vs. physical servers that will also impact the needs of your facility.

At the same time, this significantly increases the amount of cooling systems that are required for the equipment refresh. This represents a significant challenge for the thermal footprint of the data center.

Challenges of Data Center Thermal Management

Advanced thermal controls must perform a delicate balancing act to achieve proper airflow and temperature by utilizing the available cooling options such as airflow-based, water-based, and refrigerant-based systems.

Locating a data center in a location that has free cooling from cold air and/or cold water, thus generally in the far north or the far south, may help reduce the challenges of data center thermal management. Check out what Google did in Finland in a disused paper mill to make use of water from the Baltic Sea to cool its data center.

2. Power and/or Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) Failure

Power failures and the failure of supposedly uninterruptible power supplies is one of the most common causes of unplanned outages. These failures typically result simply from bad planning and a lack of investment in the necessary UPS equipment.

3. Data Center Environmental Issues

Data centers and their associated servers have power requirements for both operation and thermal management. These power requirements translate into energy needs. Data centers are huge users of energy, so where can we get this energy supply?

One option is to locate a data center near an affordable source of energy. From an environmental point-of-view, renewable energy is the obvious long-term candidate. For example, a data center located near a river with significant hydropower production might be preferred to a data center located near a nuclear power station, even if, in the short-term, nuclear power might be less expensive than hydropower. Data center plans should consider the long-term environmental impact.

According to Forbes, globally, data centers now account for 1% of electricity demands and contribute 0.3% of CO2 emissions. Energy efficiency, however, is key. Data center designers need to consider overall energy consumption as well as energy efficiency. There is no sense in designing for low-cost energy only to learn that the energy consumption is minimal or, conversely, that energy is not being used efficiently. Studies show that data center capacity is typically underutilized, yet idle servers still consume energy. Any gains from low-cost energy must be used effectively and efficiently.

4. Challenges in Data Center Networking and Cabling

There are two potential challenges in data center networking. First, bandwidth: how much data can travel over a connection? Higher bandwidth means better network speed.

The other side of the coin is latency: the measurement of how long it takes for data to travel to its destination. Latency is the delay of the data, which at the macro-level is a function of distance that data must travel.

Regardless of the speed of the connection, data must travel some distance. That movement of data between locations takes time. Networking in a data center relies on speed: fiber optic cables and data traveling a short distance to avoid data center latency issues. Cables between your server, storage, and networking equipment can quickly become unruly, so having a plan in place beforehand can prevent challenges down the road.

Besides distance, network complexity is important. Network equipment is never 100% efficient as they are constantly prioritizing how packets should be routed. The shortest route might not always be available. Data may have to travel through more connections, which increases latency. In many cases, network bandwidth monitoring software can help you observe your network condition and respond accordingly.

5. Data Center Security Issues

There are several common data center security challenges, from physical security to access-related issues, such as Denial of Service (DoS). In addition, there are data-related issues, such as confidential information being stolen, data being altered, or the pure loss of data. IBM’s recent study of data breaches shows that more than half (52%) of data breaches are caused by malicious attacks, with the breakdown of root causes being:

- Compromised Credentials

- Phishing

- Cloud Misconfiguration

- Vulnerability in Third-party Software

- Physical Security Compromise

These threats, however, are no longer the costliest malicious data breaches, as of 2021. Business Email Compromise now tops the list, from an average cost point-of-view, with Phishing and Malicious Insider close behind.

6. Data Center Management Issues

The management of a data center is challenging. The highest priority is identifying and eliminating risk from the operation of the data center, with the goal of achieving high reliability of critical systems and providing high availability to customers. A key technique to address data center management issues is to take a calculated approach to Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM).

DCIM typically monitors, measures, manages, and controls a data center’s:

- Equipment, such as servers, storage, and network

- Infrastructure such as power distribution and cooling systems

The goal of DCIM is to allow a holistic view of a data center’s performance in terms of floor space, equipment, and power/energy, as well as analyzing the data related to these criteria. DCIM should allow facilities to determine how efficient they are operating. Platforms like Entangl can provide enhanced DCIM capabilities by automatically identifying inefficiencies and optimizing resources for better operational performance.

Real-time Network Monitoring and Reporting

One important aspect of DCIM is to properly monitor and measure network operations. As stated previously, there are numerous challenges to be addressed in data center networking and cabling, from the bandwidth between critical systems to the latency involved in the networking. Thus, DCIM requires a real-time view of the network to ensure that proper reporting and analysis can be done to identify and fix any potential bottlenecks.

Operation-side monitoring and client-side monitoring can be a different challenge altogether. You may encounter client issues that don’t originate from within your data center, but DCIM tools won’t necessarily help you identify where the real failure is. Clients can leverage network monitoring software for more comprehensive visibility into their overall network.

Optimizing Performance

Efficient data center management means optimizing performance. For data centers, this means doing more with less, while at the same time ensuring availability, Uptime, and reliability. One key component of optimization is power usage. How effective is the data center in its total power requirement?

Performance is also about computation usage: efficiently managing workloads, and cooling efficiency. Well-optimized data centers are generally more reliable, providing an additional boost in performance as perceived by customers.

Reducing CAPEX and OPEX

Organizations that are operating their own data centers are making capital expenditure investments with associated upfront costs as well as recurring upgrade costs. A typical CapEx approach is focusing resources on non-core business of the organization. Third party IT hardware maintenance can effectively delay the need for equipment refreshes while saving 30-40% compared to OEM support contracts.

The alternatives are co-located and Cloud-based data centers with controllable operating expenses (OpEx). OpEx allows greater flexibility. Remote hands in data centers can also be used to reduce the cost of colocation ops while maintaining a reasonable level of control over your network.

In both CapEx-oriented and OpEx-oriented approaches, organizations need to optimize their usage of resources so that they are only paying for what they really need.

Overcome Persistent Data Center Challenges with the Right Partner

Comprehensive data center and networking optimization can be difficult to achieve using several different vendors. Platforms like Entangl can offer AI-driven insights for managing hardware, optimizing infrastructure, and ensuring a reliable and efficient data center. Contact us today to learn how you can get seamless support and tackle common data center problems with a trusted partner.