Friday, November 20, 2009

Building a data center can prove tricky for construction firms
The Business Journal of the Greater Triad Area - by Michelle Cater Rash Staff writer

Because of their unique nature, data centers require specialized design and construction.

Data centers also have high electrical demands, which means special accommodations need to be made for electricity as well as heating and cooling systems. The electrical, fiber optic, heating and cooling systems all have multiple redundancies in place to ensure the data center can be operational at all times. That means they have at least two power sources, plus at least one battery-powered backup for each of those power sources.

In many data centers, all of these mission-critical items are kept in a separate part of the facility, sectioned off from the servers and other technology housed there, and often under a separate roof.

"It's like a building inside of a building," says Jim Ruffin, vice president of Landmark Builders. "Because that is where everything comes into the building, they can't afford a failure there."

Experts say the biggest challenge is designing the electrical and mechanical systems to handle the load of a full data center and to do sufficient testing to know that all of the backup systems will kick in and run properly if ever needed. So data center mechanical systems face a much tougher testing regimen than similar systems in a traditional office building.

"Some of this stuff might not be activated for years, if at all. But if it's needed, we need to know it will work," Ruffin says. "The business of the data center depends on it."

While DataChambers' Winston-Salem data center is a bit of an anomaly in terms of construction — it was built in an underground World War II-era missile arsenal — it has the same security features that one would likely find at a newly built, above ground structure. With clients such as hospitals and banks, DataChambers President and CEO Nicholas Kottyan notes that security is paramount.