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Data Center Containment Provider Due Diligence

This is the fifth article in a best practices series on data center energy efficiency through effective airflow management strategies. When considering containment providers and their solutions, make sure to do your due diligence. Consider the following points during that process.

This is the fifth article in a best practices series on data center energy efficiency through effective airflow management strategies.

Containment providers include Eaton, APC, Emerson, Chatsworth, Electrorack, AFCO Systems, Subzero Engineering, and Polargy. When considering containment providers and their solutions, make sure to do your due diligence.

Consider the following points during that process:

  • Know your heat containment needs and how much heat you need to manage.
  • Know the thermal profile of all equipment coming into the data center.
  • Know the fire protection codes and how containment will affect these.
  • Know what else the containment strategy will affect.
  • Know how much cooling you need up front and how much to plan for the future.
  • Know what you are supporting today for IT and the business and how business decisions will affect future planning.
  • Link facilities planning to business planning.
  • Know room geometry and the constraints of cold air delivery and hot air removal when planning for containment.
  • Know your space and how well a vendor solution will integrate with the existing racks, whether uniform or non-uniform.
  • Know whether you will have an outage window for installing containment and the risks around production equipment during containment assembly.

Next Thursday’s article will cover Data Center Containment Considerations and Recommendations. If you would prefer, you can download the complete Data Center Knowledge Guide to Data Center Containment in PDF form, courtesy of Eaton.

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