subject: Raised Floors In A Colocation Facility [print this page] Cost is not the only factor you should consider when researching colocation facilities. Your servers are the life-blood of your company, so you should consider the differences in construction of a purpose-built facility compared to a retrofit facility along with their respective prices.
As a cost conscious business owner, it is worth your while to find a colocation facility that goes beyond typical data center design to provide the highest quality, most efficient and reliable service possible at an affordable price. One key feature of purpose built facilities that may sway your decision is the implementation of a recessed slab foundation with raised floors throughout the facility.
Today"s purpose-built data centers are constructed with a foundational concrete slab, which is built on caisson pier foundations driven into bedrock. This provides a solid foundation to protect against earthquakes and floods. In addition, the depressed slab makes it much easier to load equipment at ground level. In most retrofitted buildings, equipment must be hauled up a ramp to a raised floor, which can be slow and dangerous.
After the recessed slab is built, raised floor tiles are then installed three feet above the foundation to create a large void, allowing air distribution throughout the entire facility. This also creates a safe and secure place to run power and data cabling.
The best colocation centers will invest in high-quality floor tiles, such as Tate ConCore 2500, to complete their raised floors. These tiles have a higher price, but are concrete-filled and capable of withstanding a single-point load of 2,500 pounds on a one square inch area at any location on the panel. They also provide a minimum safety factor of 2, meaning any tile can support up to 5,000 pounds on any single square inch.
For the highest possible load rating, every corner of every floor tile should rest on pedestals, with the edges of the tiles supported by stringers. This will also provide extra stiffness to keep the floor tiles straight, aligned and level with each other.
Raised floors allow facility operators to distribute cold air wherever customers need it with perforated floor tiles. This raised-floor cold air distribution system, paired with experienced and disciplined hot air segregation, creates an extremely efficient, reliable and flexible data center.
Finally, a colocation facility should utilize 50 ton Computer Room Air Handler (CRAH) units to supply enough cooling to support complete data center operations. Engineered for efficiency, CRAH units coupled with raised floors throughout the facility will send chilled air to aisles and racks.
These energy efficient measures are rare, but worth finding in a quality colocation facility. Truly world-class data centers always choose the very best equipment and vendors in facility planning and construction, and then offer their premier services at a reasonable price. A premium facility will integrate features into the infrastructure that guarantee energy efficiency with maximum uptime and performance.
