scope:

INTRODUCTION

Data center facilities house computer servers and associated components, such as networking equipment, telecommunication and archiving storage servers. Data centers with large footprints or high power densities are typically standalone facilities; whereas data centers with small footprints or low power densities could be a tenant within a building. Data centers can be distinguished by their exceptionally high energy consumption compared to other types of facilities. For instance, typical office buildings consume an average of 5 to 10 W/ft² power density, as compared to modern data centers, which are now designed to consume an average of 150 to 750 W/ft² of electricity input (Patterson and Fenwick 2008). This is roughly equal to 600 to 1800 W/ft² of the server footprint.

Typically, a data center is served by dedicated mechanical, electrical and fire protection infrastructure that is independent from the systems that serve other portions of the building. Similar to other building types, data center infrastructures are designed to meet local, state and federal building codes, as well as design standards and guidelines set forth by industry organizations such as the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning (ASHRAE), National Electrical Code (NEC) and National Fire Protection Agency (NFPA). Additionally, data center design is often required to meet certain levels of redundancy, reliability, maintainability, fault tolerance, scalability and flexibility. The industry-recognized topologies for infrastructure design and site resiliency are established by the Uptime Institute, a consortium of companies and industry leaders devoted to maximizing uptime for data center operations.