Today’s data-centric enterprises need more processing, data and connectivity in less floor space. Storage is more compact, servers are now available in blades with multiple servers within one chassis, and connectivity is responding with high-density solutions. The cost per square inch of utilization within the data center equates to prime real estate. With new demands and mandates for redundancy, cost becomes a prime consideration for companies.

Industry standards recommend that the horizontal cabling in a data center be installed with enough capacity for future growth.

By the end of the century, there will be an estimated one terabyte of data stored for every person on Earth. So how, with these increases in storage, can the overall real estate required shrink? The answer is clear. More data fits in less space; more instructions are processed in the same chip space used 18 months ago.

There is a fine art to planning data center capacity, growth, space and power. Data centers are rated in four tiers. Each tier represents a level of redundancy and usage. Each level of redundancy requires additional space.

The size of the data center depends on the number of persons served. Industry standards recommend that for each square foot of work area space (100 square feet), equipment rooms shall contain 0.75 square feet of equipment room space, with an additional 0.25 square feet for each 250 square feet of building automation zone. Companies should anticipate and plan for future growth to ensure the main data facility has enough ports available and space allocated to add additional personnel and resources to the network.

If a building provides 20,000 square feet of usable floor space, for example, this provides roughly 200 work areas and will require 170 square feet of equipment room space, including building automation space. If a tenant is renting space at $40 per square foot, the price tag on the equipment room alone is $6,800. The area of one rack (19² x 24² deep) plus clearances (three feet in front of the rack plus two feet to the rear) equates to $442.40 in floor space per rack. This figure does not include side clearances, heating and cooling, and monitoring. A typical rack has about 42 RU (1.5² per rack unit). Each RU then costs $10.53 in this example.

 

Protection from downtime and its associated costs make these data centers some of the most valuable assets within a company. There is a finite amount of expandability outward or upward, however, so the best solution is to utilize each rack unit to its fullest potential.

The same can be said for racks in intermediate cross-connects and other distribution areas. This floor space cannot be used for work areas and, therefore, the equipment productivity is the only revenue contributor throughout the areas.

Many of the data centers in use today were designed for yesterday’s systems and system needs. New applications, data requirements and telecommunication needs are now filling every conceivable inch. High-density blade servers, high-density switches and high-density connectivity components offer new promise, as each RU is now capable of housing more ports and processing power than ever before.

Additional enhancements have been made through standardization of equipment airflow, eliminating some of the legacy equipment’s requirements for air space above and/or below the equipment, and increasing the density of the racks, as well. Older servers require as many as five RU to operate; some will not even fit in racks and require their own dedicated floor space. With some of the new blade servers, 12 servers can now fit in the same five rack units, lowering the space rental costs of each server from $52.65 to $4.39.

Switches have also increased in port density per rack unit. The older 24-port switches have been updated and offer as many as 96 ports in roughly the same two-unit space. Keyboard/video/mouse switches have also entered the data center, with support for as many as 128 ports in a single box, eliminating the need for separate input/output interfaces to multiple servers.

Using the same costs as above, the price per port for rental space for a legacy 24-port switch residing in two rack units is $0.88 per port. The 96-port equivalent carries a space rental cost of $0.22 per port.

 

Many equipment manufacturers utilize RJ-21 or mini RJ-21x connectors, which terminate to 10/100 2-pair connections. Should a company upgrade its blade servers to gigabit, however, recabling to a standards-based 4-pair connection would be inevitable. Additional cables will need to be added to support the migration from 2-pair 10/100BASE-T to 4-pair 1000BASE-T or higher applications.

Another byproduct of high-density products is lower overall space costs for companies that have several non-terminated inactive ports. Industry standards recommend that the horizontal cabling in a data center be installed with enough capacity for future growth so that the horizontal can remain unchanged throughout the life of the system. Dark fiber or unused ports consume space even though it is not immediately productive.

New high-density patch panels lower the cost of non-productive space by placing more connections within the same rack space. When selecting a high-density patch panel, there are more important considerations than how many ports fit into a rack space. Too much density can actually decrease the throughput in your environment through the coupling of noise from one connector to another within the same patch panel. Greater noise equals lower bandwidth, more errors, more retransmissions, and will negate any operational savings through loss of productivity.

When figuring total cost of ownership and return on investment for this equipment, realize its importance to your company’s operations. Do not rely on a single vendor for advice. Comparison shop with multiple contenders and evaluate based upon the best values and not price alone. Being price conscious matters, but not at the expense of quality and reliability.

Watch for mean time before failure numbers. Understand all of their comparative numbers and what each means. Buying quality equipment may mean the difference between spending a week in Tahiti or a week in the new data center. Now that would be dense!

About the Author

Carrie Higbie is Network Applications Market Manager for The Siemon Company. She has over 20 years experience in the computer industry, holds several certifications, and has taught related topics at the collegiate level and within the industry. Carrie participates with the IEEE, TIA, and various consortiums for standards acceptance.