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As examples, locating
available space for such components as chillers or
cooling towers and generators is sometimes problematic
and understanding the alternatives is important. Also,
finding the most appropriate path to route
communications and power cables is usually a huge
challenge. In both of these cases, getting building
management to agree with your proposed solutions is an
essential part of the design process. Here are some
other issues to focus on:
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Should you install
a private communications riser or use the
building riser?
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Should
communications risers be in conduit or armored
cable?
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Can the building
power riser support your electrical needs or do
you need a private electrical riser?
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From an HVAC
perspective are you using a private cooling
system or using the building provided condensed
water?
-
If you are using
building provided power and condensed water, how
will you keep the datacenter running when the
building performs a riser shut-down for
maintenance or modifications?
-
Have the cooling
water pumps been specified to account for the
added pressure of the riser to the roof?
These are just a few of
the many questions that need to be asked and answered
when your datacenter is in a high-rise building.
 Redundancies
How redundant is your
datacenter? When asked this question, most folks
considering their datacenter design will focus on such
issues as the number of UPS systems and air
conditioners, but you can’t stop there. From an IT
perspective you must also have redundancy in the
provisioning of communications circuits. New Vista has
a seriously significant amount of experience dealing
with communications redundancies at all levels,
beginning at the carrier level designing a
communications network environment that has circuit,
path and Central Office redundancy. At the building
level, we ensure that communications comes into the
building through multiple building penetrations, use
different risers to your floor and different horizontal
paths wherever they occur. Finally at the IT Network
level we ensure the architecture has no single points of
failure that can interrupt mission critical
communications.
As with Communications
redundancy, power redundancy ideally should have
multiple riser connections from the point of entry to
the datacenter, along with multiple sources of power.
Since it is usually difficult to impossible to feed
metro datacenters from multiple power grids, the design
should include multiple points of entry going to
different switched segments on the utility grid.
Additionally, a datacenter’s redundancy design should
include the use of a generator, if the utility fails
completely. Finally, how all of this is glued together
with various pieces of power switchgear, and automatic
and manual transfer switches is super important, and
should include both the systems and mechanical power
systems!
NewVista pays special
attention to the various failure scenarios that can
occur and provides alternatives for the design, along
with recommendations for an appropriate solution at the
price point appropriate for the budget, along with the
benefits and issues with that design. We help you
select a design appropriate for your budget, understand
the benefits and exposures of that design and mitigate
the exposures through ongoing processes designed to
help prevent failure events, and mitigate the impact
when they occur.
Diversities
Diversities are as
important to a good design as redundancies for the
availability of your datacenter. It is sometimes
unbelievable how many times we look at a design that
highlights its redundancy, only to find that the two
communications risers take the same path through the
same closets (think about a fire in one of the closets
in the stack) or we find that diverse communications
vendors are actually delivering type 2 service over the
primary vendors circuits (eg – Verizon is primary, AT&T
is secondary or diverse vendor – AT&T uses Verizon to
deliver the circuit into the building). In both cases,
the client thought they had created a diverse situation,
where in reality, they had not.
NewVista ensures your
design has the necessary diversity to ensure your
redundancy provides the redundancy you need.
The bottom line on
building technology in a high rise building is that you
need to have done this before, many times, to do it
right. NewVista Advisors has multiple successful
implementations in some of the most challenging
buildings you can be asked to build in. We can help you
be successful in your high-rise project.
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