Plan your data centre

Guides

Practical notes for planning data centre power, cooling and delivery. Start with the constraint or service that matters to your site.

By grid situation

• Limited grid power: plan a data centre in phases

  Use the available grid capacity to size phase 1 and leave room to grow.

• Unreliable grid power: design the whole backup chain

  Plan UPS, generators, fuel and transfers around the outages your site faces.

• Off-grid data centres: solar, storage and firm power

  Balance continuous demand with solar output, battery storage and firm supply.

By climate

• Data centre cooling in a hot, humid climate

  Choose cooling around local humidity, dew point and rack inlet conditions.

• Data centre cooling in a hot, dry climate

  Plan heat rejection, water use and dust protection for hot, dry conditions.

By buyer

• Planning a data centre for a telecom operator

  Bring power, cooling, fibre routes and service continuity into one plan.

• Planning a government or national data centre

  Plan service migration, recovery, operations and handover from the start.

• Modular data centres for small sites

  Check module size, delivery access and the connections needed for expansion.