Creating Ideal Cabinet Ecosystems

It is likely that if you are reading this that you already have your own Data Center that is growing. Great! But as your business demands grow, so does the pressure on your servers and cabinets. Having an ideal ecosystem for your servers and cabinets to be placed can be the difference between streamlined efficiency and total meltdown. What creates the ideal ecosystem for Data Center cabinets? Understanding these core values can help you maintain your existing hardware and assist in improving your growth integration products as well.

Structure

Cabinets are used because it enables the facility to stack equipment in a vertical fashion and reduce inefficient space. Having the proper space to cabinet ratio is extremely important as it affects your current use and future growth. When choosing cabinets, consider some of these thoughts before making a final decision:

• Deep Cabinets: Deeper cabinets enable increased airflow and cabling behind the servers to minimize overheating and misuse of space. Reduced temps decreases the workload on the servers and can help extend their lifetime.
• Weight Considerations: Cabinets ideally should be able to hold 3,000 pounds of equipment on average. Load testing your cabinets can help determine if this is within a products range. Ask cabinet providers to send over their load test results for review.
• Movement: Are your cabinets on casters? Better hope so! Although Data Centers are planned in advance, changes in needs, design and growth can cause the placement of your cabinets to change. Keeping cabinets on casters makes moving these more efficient and reduces cost.

Power Distribution

Energy footprint is always a major concern within the Data Center Industry. Ensuring required power is available when needed, but not constantly overloading the system is something all facilities try to manage. Adding in the cost of power distribution, it is critical to have this balance managed to reduce the facility footprint and operation costs. Here are some key tips to optimize this balance:

• Monitoring Circuits: Be sure that there is a fail safe in place to minimize overcurrent situations on branch PDUs in the system. Integrating a fail safe system to monitor overcurrent can reduce your energy costs and stop a overcharge at the circuit breakers.
• Smart Monitoring: As mentioned above, having a remote management system that is constantly monitoring these possible system issues decreases the likelihood of a major issue. Review numerous systems and test their fail safes before choosing.
• High Temps: High Density Cabinets are charged more than other cabinets. A good PDU will keep a temperature rating of up to 149 degrees.

Cooling

Keeping your hardware at optimal temps, while decreases energy costs starts with proper cooling and airflow management. Effective airflow is the leader in reduced issues with cabinets. Here are some tips to improve your ecosystem:

• Select a cabinet with air perforation through the door at the minimum of at 78%.
• Purchase accessories that will increase the airflow from the front to the back of the cabinet.
• Integrate vertical exhaust ducts to push hot air away from the servers to the outside environment so the HVAC system does not have to work overtime to push in cooler air.

These are just a few tips to improve your cabinet ecosystem. Contact DCS today to learn how you can continue to improve your Data Center!