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.
Quote from the white paper:
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.
