Data Center Physical Infrastructure

As we mention in earlier posts, data center physical infrastructure ( DCPI) is the foundation upon which telecommunication networks reside, therefore is the backbone of the data center and provides power, cooling, security,cabling, physical housing and fire protection.

In this post we are going to analyze how implement each one of this set of characteristics, when designing a data center.

• Power: It is necessary to ensure the availability of the system, so all the power supplied to the equipment needed, must be failure resistant. To do this is we can have energy generators, two different power lines provided by different companies, and uninterruptible power supply systems (UPS).
• Cooling: To control the temperature of the data center, and avoid heating of servers we will need cooling machines and infrastructure to get to a cold aisle containment. As it's shown in the figure below, the cooling machines will drive out hot air from the servers and will introduce cold air in the cold aisles. This cold aisles will be closed to hold the cold inside.

  

• Cabling: As there will be a large number of cables, it is essential to  organize them by labeling and passing it through false ceilings or raised floors, and having systems to monitor that all the connections are working properly.
• Security: Additionally to network protection it is necessary to implement physical protection to the data center, such as access control with ID cards, electromagnetic locks, security cameras,motion detectors, among others.
  
• Fire protection: In case of fire it is necessary to have a system to extinguish the fire, but the problem is that we can't use a normal fire protection system because water will damage all the equipment. There are many systems specially design to do fire protection in data centers, such as gaseous products for fire suppression like HFCs (Hydrofluorocarbons) which are unhealthy for data center employees, or some water base options like sprinkler systems.
  Here you will find a interesting link about advantages and disadvantages of using each system.
• Physical housing: Though it is not the most important point when designing a data center, we should also consider to locate our data center balancing between several factors: economic cost, nearby available infrastructure, and risks such as natural disasters.