The importance of applications housed within corporate data centers only continues to increase. In this white paper, we highlight how critical it is for your data center facility’s systems to perform as required under maximum load. However, we point out that even as all data center providers perform some level of commissioning, not all data center constructs cannot perform the necessary level of testing.

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Also known as the “integration phase”, Level 5 commissioning is the most important component of the commissioning process. In this phase, every aspect of the data center is tested while it is running at its maximum capacity. In other words, every component and system of the facility must prove its ability to perform when the data center is operating in its most stressful environment. During Level 5 commissioning, all failure modes are tested and resiliency is validated, including scenarios such as:

• How do the back-up systems perform in the event of a dropped utility line?
• How do the redundant units respond when a CRAC fails?
• Does the facility’s power architecture switch over upon the failure of a UPS?

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Digital Realty Trust’s Senior Vice President, Chris Crosby, articulates alternatives available to you in designing and constructing your new data center facility. This white paper defines the tasks that are associated with acquiring, designing and constructing a data center facility and the issues associated with each of them. It addresses the degree of risk inherent in each of these options to help assist you in choosing the alternative that best addresses your corporate needs.

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Building a data center is a non-trivial exercise with a great deal of inherent risk if each of the elements that are associated with its development are not fully understood and administered by experienced personnel. The basic components that characterize any data center development timeline fall into five (5) specific areas:

Site Selection and Acquisition
In this portion of the timeline companies must determine their requirements, and identify and procure the physical site.

Design
During the design phase of the timeline, firms must quantify their level of risk tolerance and determine if they want to build the required resiliency into the site. This period also focuses on developing the master plan, schedules, budgets, hiring consultants, contractors and obtaining necessary permits.

Construction
The construction portion of the timeline is the longest of the entire development process. It is also the area most prone to cost overruns and contingency payments due to equipment delays and use of non-standard components and processes.

Commissioning
Throughout the five (5) levels of commissioning all of the systems components are tested at their maximum load volumes and the inter-operability between systems must also be verified.

Close-Out
During close-out all punch list items must be identified and corrected. All operational procedures and processes must be documented and in place, and all support personnel trained and certified.

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How often does the end product of countless hours of planning and activity, not to mention financial commitment, fail to live up to expectations? Often, the product or operation is launched with great fanfare only to prove unable to perform its desired function on a consistent basis. In many instances, data centers follow this same course of initial promise followed by an unpredictable stream of service disruptions and system’s failures.

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This final component of a first-class data center operation effectively ties together the preceding three attributes. By integrating the right monitoring and control systems, you place a powerful tool set into the hands of your data center management staff. The purpose of any combination of data center management systems is to provide your personnel with both a real-time overview of all of your operations, as well as to capture critical historical information. This collected information can then be used in a variety of ways. Trending, for example, can be used to identify the precursors to system problems or failures, thereby enabling your personnel to proactively defuse them as well as correctly budget for repairs.