Data Room Design 1

[crmayer]

I am not sure if this is the forum that I need, but it is the closet thing to what I am looking for....

We are designing a new data center in our new building, and I am looking at getting server cabinets opposed to the bakers type of server rack we currently have. But I am looking for pro and cons of them, so I can get the benefits of having server cabinets...... Currently we have just one big open rack and about 5 servers sit on, I would like to get enclosed cabinets so when we start upgrading server we can get rack mount server to put into these racks, but I need to sell a couple of people on this. Is there some advice somebody can give me or some sites that I can go to and compare the two?

 

[wires]

Back in the old days we had computer rooms with their own power, HVAC and fire suppression systems. Very expensive. As computers got smaller, more robust and smaller offices came online a computer room became almost anyplace with a AC outlet. The concept of a computer room as returned with enclosed racks that have their own "computer room" type properties.

Here are two vendors of such systems:

http://www.apc.com/products/infrastruxure/index.cfm

http://www.liebert.com/dynamic/displayproduct.asp?id=1005&cycles=60hz

To me the extra expense of these solutions would depend on the environmental conditions of your building. If the room where you are going to locate this equipment in clean and has good temperature control then enclosed racks don't buy you much but appearance. Everything that mounts in a rack cost more.

I have seen high density computing environments done well with both racks and free standing wire ("bakers type") shelving. The advantage of any sort of free standing system is that you can get to both sides is a piece of equipment which makes everything easier. If you have the space go free standing instead of mounted against a wall.

Locally there is a research group that put together a 60 PC cluster on freestanding wire shelving. There 2 five shelf units with 6 PCs per shelf. It is neat as a pin with different colored patch cables to reflect the "tiers" of connectivity. The parts for whole project cost less than $20k. With racks and rack mount PCs it could have easily cost twice that.

 

[Sympology]

Mmm benifits of Proper server cabs, well heres a few:

Ease of access to servers.
If the server goes down and you need to get to it, you don't have to shift half a dozen others out of the way.

Health and saftey:
See above! And if correctly set up, they don't topple over.

Tidyness.
Look so much more professional

Cable management.
No more ooops pulled wrong cable (well less anyway)

Cooling.
Modern racks are designed to allow correct air flow.

Power.
PDU's & Up's fit into racks properly.

Sure people can think of many many more



Only the truly stupid believe they know everything.
Stu.. 2004

 

[fs483]

If you have many servers and upses, it's worth going for server cabinet or 4-post open rack shelf. I'm my server rooms, I usually have at least 2 servers, 3 UPSes (one for each server + 1 for telecom), firewal, switches, router, keyboard, mouse, KVM and monitor. All of that fits nicely in a single server cabinet nothing wider than 21" and about 30" deep. Try stacking all of that on other type of shelving, not very secure. Esthetic wise, it makes it real clean and professional. I have to agree anything rack mount is more expensive (have you seen the LCD/keyboard/mouse combo that fits in a 1U)... For my smaller customers with a single server setup, any type of desk will do. Open rack systems are less expensive and you don't have to worry as much for the ventilation. For closed cabinet systems, you must have great ventilation but it does keep the noise down quite a bit and it's locked. I've been using the APC 4post open racks and they are marvelous.

akwong

 

[netmanrick]

APC has a white paper on cabinets/racks/computer rooms.
I use the adage "How much is your data worth ?".
There is a document published by US Government entitled Federal Information Processing Standard. Good info on power,environmental,security,etc.

Rick Harris
SC Dept of Motor Vehicles
Network Operations

 

[crmayer]

Thanks for all the advice....
Now, with all the racks out there, how does one know that I am getting the right one for out needs?
Cooling Fans and ventelation. What type of power source we need, should we have them hardwired or power strips?

These are the types of things I am worried about, being new to server racks and not quite sure what to look for and make sure we have. But on the flip side, make sure the sales rep is not selling me something in a rack that we will never need, or something that is way too much for what we need

 

[wires]

Cooling Fans and ventelation."

That depends on the room. If the room has good HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning) then open racks are the cheapest option.

If you go with closed racks then they have to have some type of ventilation plan. This ranges from sparsely populating the rack to self contained HVAC in the rack.

If your new room is secure and well ventilated I would go with open racks. Like these:

http://www.middleatlantic.com/enclosure/gang/mrkg.htm

"What type of power source we need, should we have them hardwired or power strips?"

There are two schools of thought.

First is a UPS for each rack or enclosure. I first ran across this in a high reliability environment where the enclosed rack was on wheels. The idea was if the rack was moved it could become unplugged from the wall outlet which was wired to a VERY large UPS backed by a generator. Having the UPS in the rack solved that problem. This was a belt and suspenders type place, never mind that a UPS should not get it's power from another UPS due to waveform and power factor considerations...

Second is a UPS sized run all the equipment in the room. Depending on the size of installation you may need an electrician to hardwire the UPS to dedicated outlets. On smaller installations a decent job can be done with custom cords. Check with a local electrician since electrical codes vary.

My preference is one large UPS with additional batteries or generator backup. I find it easier to maintain one UPS than many. The larger UPS are better built and have a better feature set. I have had problems with some of the sub $200 units randomly stopping even with good power and good batteries.

In any case a vertical power strip in each rack is the way to go. These 24 outlet strips are nice:

http://www.middleatlantic.com/power/vps.htm

 

[franklin97355]

crmayer, I'd recommend you get a consultant in there for some help with your questions. Without having the entire plan available there is little we can do but give you pointers. You need professional help. (in a good way)