Gain clear insight into the scope of activities that must be completed before any data center build decision is made.

Establish clear project scope, decision rights, and executive sponsorship for the data center build project.

Outline a clear and accurate budget and ensure funding for both the construction phase and the ongoing operating expenses of the facility.

Frequent and formal communications with the executive team ensures continued buy-in and support for the tricky issues that will inevitably arise during the project.

The skills required to execute a data center facility build-out are rarely found in-house. A competent General Contractor with deep experience building similar facilities (of size and scope) is required. Selecting the contractor with the skills, approach, and right cost is tricky. Ensure the vendor matches the requirements and form a solid base for the long and expensive project ahead.

Site selection has three distinct phases that are often over looked. Ensure that the final site selection is optimal and does not lead to foreseeable cost overruns in years 2 through 5.

The data center’s power and cooling capacity must adequately support the organization’s current infrastructure as well as meet future needs and requirements. To determine long-term need, IT must have a method to properly calculate and forecast data center power, cooling and, standby power requirements. IT departments that use a best-guess method are likely to run into trouble, and will incur unnecessary costs when adding new capacity for equipment in the future. By investing time finding the right information and performing the calculations involved in estimating facility requirements, IT will ensure that the data center has the right amount of power at the right cost to support both current and future needs.

Before data center building or refresh plans can be finalized, IT must pay careful attention to the layout and design of building space. Along with the room that houses servers and data center equipment, space must also be allocated to rooms which relate to the support of data center functions and activity. The emphasis for space allocation decisions should be based on the workflow of the data center to try to achieve a balance between cost and flexible space for future business growth and changes.

Fire protection is a critical and obligatory part of data center design and planning. Because a fire can happen at any time, IT must be prepared to protect the data center with the necessary equipment for the following reasons:

• Life safety. The primary concern when assessing data center fire protection requirements is to protect the lives of data center and surrounding personnel.
• Protection of property. Servers and other equipment located in the data center are extremely expensive to replace. A fire protection plan should safeguard all equipment from excessive loss or damage.
• Continuity of operations. The cost of downtime in critical business activities can cost the company thousands of dollars and interrupt employee productivity.
• Codes and standards. IT managers must comply with the state, local, federal, and National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) codes and standards. However, it is ultimately the Authority Having Jurisdiction that will dictate the majority of fire protection requirements.