As we continue to use more and more data in our daily lives, from streaming to shopping, data centres are becoming more essential than ever.
Modern data centre design is constructed with the future in mind, ready to grow at a moment’s notice to accommodate the ever-growing demands for data storage.
Here’s what to consider when it comes to data centre design.
Data Centre Design: Key Considerations
Cooling
One of the most important things to consider in data centre design is how you’ll cool it. Data centres process vast quantities of data every day, and generate a lot of heat as they do. If this heat isn’t dealt with correctly, it can cause equipment failure, damage servers, and potentially lead to the loss of vital data.
When planning your data centre design, there are several cooling systems to consider:
- Liquid cooling – Using piped liquid to absorb heat away from the server racks.
- Air cooling – Installing fans and air conditioning units to circulate out warm air and replace it with cool air.
- Immersion cooling – Submerging servers that generate heat in fluids for better heat conductivity.
- Free cooling – A type of cooling system that utilises low-temperature outside air to assist in or completely replace the mechanical refrigeration process.
- Adiabatic cooling – Utilising water evaporation to enhance the efficiency of the chillers.
Connectivity
Data centres need to connect to the outside world to effectively operate, allowing people to access the information stored within them. There are many aspects that need to be planned into data centre connectivity:
- Internet connectivity – Ensuring data centres are connected to internet providers so data can be accessed when necessary.
- Cloud connectivity – Many businesses rely on cloud computing to operate,
- Colocation – Modern data centre design allows businesses to house their own servers and network equipment. Cross connects are then used to establish dedicated connections between customers and their data.
- Data centre interconnectivity – Often, data centres need to connect to one another to enable data replication, load balancing, and recovery capabilities.
Power
Power is baked into data centre design. If power were to fail to a data centre, it could lead to massive losses of data, which is why specialist data centre providers build backup generators and uninterruptible power supplies into their designs.
Security
Data centres hold a wealth of valuable information, often highly sensitive. Ensuring the physical security of these locations is essential when it comes to good data centre design to prevent the loss or theft of any data.
When designing a data centre, the experts at Sweet Projects plan in essential security elements, including fire suppression systems, CCTV, and access control so your data centre meets the highest security standards.
Scalability
As the demand for data storage grows, so does the demand for data centres. These days, it’s vital to build scalability into data centres designs, to ensure they have the capacity to continue processing large amounts of data.
Consider implementing modular design for the easy addition of hardware to store more data, or how you could add more power and cooling units to account for increasing demand.
Construction
Finally, a key consideration should be how your data centre will be constructed. Opting for turnkey data centre construction can offer a faster timeline than traditional design and build contracts, offering one single point of contact and better collaboration across your data centre project.
Data Centre Sustainability
Sustainability is a key consideration when it comes to data centre design. As data centres use vast amounts of energy cooling servers, data centre specialists are working to make them more sustainable for long-term use.
From implementing advanced cooling systems that are more energy efficient to reducing water usage, data centre sustainability is key to what we do here at Sweet Projects. Every project we undertake, we look for new and innovative ways to prioritise biodiversity and invest in the circular economy.
At our data centre project in Surrey, we sent tonnes of Correx back for remanufacturing 456 sheets of new protection materials, saving 2.66 tonnes of CO2. Our team also removed 35 tonnes of steel from demolition activity that was designated as reuse, saving 87.5 tonnes of CO2 from reprocessing and remanufacturing.
Plus, at one project in Surrey, we located Slender Bird’s Foot Trefoil, a species of plant in decline due to habitat loss. It is the first time this plant has been recorded in Surrey since the 1960s, and to support its growth, we imported topsoil to encourage greater growth.
At Sweet Projects, sustainability isn’t just a buzzword – explore more about our sustainability commitments here, including how we minimise environmental harm at each of our builds.
Data Centre Design & Construction With Sweet Projects
Constructing data centres is about striking the balance between performance, sustainability, and security.
Here at Sweet Projects, we’re working towards a more sustainable construction sector, and hold sustainability as a guiding principle in everything we do. From data centre design to the final result, we focus on going above and beyond in both sustainability and construction.
