Organizations looking to build or refresh the data center need to engage in a thorough planning process before taking action. Critical components to the planning process include:
- Determining the business need.
- Addressing application design and requirements for criticality, capacity, and growth.
- Establishing storage, server, and network requirements.
- Estimating facility requirements for power, cooling, and UPS.
Upon completion of this process, IT will be better equipped to face the build versus buy decision. Approaching the build versus buy decision incorporates a comparison of costs to a Greenfield build and/or data center refresh to that of outsourcing either components or the entire data center. Refer to the following process in the beginning stages of planning to ensure all details have been considered.