Whether it's a large corporation or a small business with just a few servers, technological excellence is demanded 24/7/365. For IT and TC to function properly, it's not enough to have top-quality products. Nor is it enough to simply replace existing units with more efficient ones. Professional, customized, and structured data center planning plays a fundamental role.

Efficient solutions can be found through detailed analyses of the specific situation, as each data center has a different basic structure. Managing an efficient and cost-effective data center requires considering all relevant parameters. Therefore, creating a suitable IT concept is always a challenge for planners. Regardless of whether a conventional expansion or a modular system is being implemented, it must be designed for a specific objective, based on key requirements and considering the impact of all factors. In this respect, building scalable data centers offers a way to meet current and future needs.

Following Standards:
An individual development plan, such as the one described above, serves as a guide to help implement a new data center. The scope encompasses everything from active equipment to the necessary cabling and electrical connections. Depending on the data center's security requirements, the fixed cabling (backbone cabling) will be planned redundantly according to the EN 50600-2-4 standard and professionally installed.

EN 50600:
The EN 50600 standard establishes, for the first time, standards for "availability, security, and energy efficiency throughout the lifecycle of data centers," including the potential for energy savings. This new standard defines building designs for data centers, as well as security and management aspects. Furthermore, the issue of "availability levels" will be harmonized. With the introduction of this standard, planners and facility owners will, for the first time, receive best practice guidelines for the implementation and operation of complete data centers.

Why is early data cabling planning so important?
As the bandwidth requirements of today's data centers increase, so do the demands on passive infrastructure. Therefore, data cabling should be planned as early as possible, ideally in conjunction with power and air conditioning. A well-designed and efficient cabling solution should balance optimized transmission lengths and attenuation budgets with a clear (and therefore flexible) structure. Selecting a suitable cabling concept for the data center should comply with EN 50173-5, EN 50174-1-2, and, as soon as it becomes available, EN 50600-2-4.

Furthermore, aspects such as energy efficiency, cooling optimization, adaptive consolidation, intelligent monitoring, and physical security must be addressed. Based on the requirements of individual parameters, it is necessary to work with clients to develop a target that can be achieved through modular system solutions, because overall IT efficiency is crucial for any data center planning. A scalable approach is just as important as coordinating power, cooling, and security components according to the building's structure and geometry. The goal of data center planning is to optimize the interfaces between the various components of the ecosystem, such as IT infrastructure, security and fire detection technologies, and access control, through modular structures. In this way, IT infrastructures can be adapted flexibly and cost-effectively to future developments. The key would be a kind of "IT on demand." This means planning a deployment in which systems are implemented on demand and can be expanded at any time through a modular structure.

Redundant
planning is essential for the effective implementation of the project, particularly regarding the optimization of data center infrastructure and performance capabilities. Unnecessary energy consumption, and therefore increased operating costs, can be avoided. Redundancy in power supply and cooling is as important in modern data centers as dual power supplies and continuous system maintenance. The recommended ambient temperature in a data center, for example, is between 22° and 25°C, with a relative humidity of 30 to 50%. Therefore, the operating temperature must be kept constant to avoid damaging the IT components.

Data center inventory analysis and quality assurance

Data transfer rate upgrades must also be considered in the planning. For example, to ensure that existing cabling is suitable for a pending bandwidth upgrade (such as from 16 to 32 Gbps in Fibre Channel), proactive testing of passive IT infrastructure should be performed using OTDR (Optical Time Domain Reflectometer) or BERT (Bit Error Testing). Additionally, existing cabling should be analyzed for contamination using microscopy.

 OTDR

An Optical Time Domain Reflectometer (OTDR) is a fiber optic instrument used for characterizing, troubleshooting, and maintaining optical telecommunications networks. OTDR testing is performed by transmitting and analyzing pulsed laser light passing through an optical fiber. The measurement must be unidirectional, as the light is used at one end of an optical fiber link.