Green Data Center Planning and Design Best Practice

indodatac

Jan 21, 20234 min read

A green data center is one of your organization's most essential investments to ensure reliability, availability, and security. It is also a sustainable option for reducing your environmental footprint and lowering operating costs over time. Suppose you are considering building or upgrading your current data center. This will help you understand the importance of planning for a green facility from the beginning through design and construction.

Green Data Center

>Green data centers are facilities designed to achieve better energy efficiency and lower operating costs. They also provide various environmental benefits, such as reduced carbon emissions, water usage, and waste generation.

A green data center is not just about hardware but the whole system. Green data centers must consider power and cooling systems and the physical space where hardware will be housed. In addition, they must handle the required redundancy while maintaining efficient power consumption levels throughout each facility's life cycle (from planning to decommission).

Energy Efficient Planning

When planning for a new data center, there are many things to consider. One of the most important is how to design a building that maximizes energy efficiency. There are several key steps you can take:

Reduce power consumption by using efficient equipment and cooling systems.
Use renewable energy sources such as wind or solar power where possible.
Use lighting systems with low-wattage bulbs or LEDs when possible (LEDs last longer and require less energy than incandescent light bulbs).
Use smartly designed power distribution systems that intelligently route electricity around your facility so that it goes only where it needs to go (such as directly into servers).

Site Selection and Environmental Impact

Site selection should consider the needs of the business, IT infrastructure, data center, and employee populations. The best site will ensure that your company can keep up with current business demands while preparing for future growth.

You need to consider factors such as available space, power distribution capabilities, and access to reliable water sources when choosing a location for your new data center facility. The following are some other things to consider during this process:

Site Security - You must choose an area that allows for strong security measures (e.g., barbed wire fences) around your building site. Your company's assets may be valuable enough to warrant extra precautions to protect them from theft or other harmful activities.
Fire Protection - Whether a purpose-built facility or a retrofitted structure within an existing building, fire protection systems should always be considered when designing a new data center.

Avoid building on top of contaminated land, as remediation work can be expensive and time-consuming.

Site Orientation, Design Concept & Building Layout

Orientation, design concept, and building layout.

Orientation: The location of your data center should be selected based on where it is most efficient to locate power, cooling, security, and access. For example, suppose you want to use solar energy for cooling. In that case, you should identify your facility in a sunny area with an elevation lower than sea level.
Design Concept: Once you have selected a site for your facility, you will need to choose a design concept that meets your requirements and complies with local building codes and regulations. You should also determine what type of construction material would best suit each component within the facility - this includes flooring materials like concrete or tile, wall coverings such as drywall panels, and roof coverings such as tiles or metal sheets.
Building Layout: Once all of these decisions have been made regarding the design concept or building layout, then we can start working out how many racks we'll need inside each cabinet space so we can calculate how much space will be required overall (e.g., 4' x 5' = 20 square feet).

High-Density Computing Considerations

High-density computing is a form of data center design that emphasizes using shared infrastructure and equipment to increase the facility's efficiency. This approach can reduce power consumption, cooling, floor space requirements, and overall costs associated with building a new data center. Multiple server racks are often installed close to one another to maximize rack density within an area. The benefits of high-density computing include the following:

Improved power utilization efficiency (PUE)
Reduced capital expenditures (CAPEX)
Lower operating expenses (OPEX)

Water Efficiency Considerations

Water efficiency is essential to a green data center plan, and several considerations must be made.

Water conservation is achieved by using cooling towers or evaporative cooling instead of chillers and adopting energy-efficient processes for heating water in the facility.
Water reuse refers to reusing wastewater generated during treatment processes or after it has been treated.
Water treatment can include biological filtration and other methods, such as chemical disinfection. With the treatment, we can ensure that water meets the standards set by local authorities before being released into the environment. It's also possible to recycle greywater as part of this process, reducing overall consumption while keeping costs low.
Stormwater management involves managing runoff from heavy rainstorms so that it doesn't lead directly into nearby streams or rivers. Instead, we could divert rain into designated storage areas where it can settle naturally over time before being released downstream later near its original point.

Data Center Commissioning

Data center commissioning is a multi-stage process that ensures a building and its systems are ready for use. It involves various activities, including authorizing the installation, testing and verifying system performance, training end users on new technology, and conducting acceptance testing of the facility.

Commissioning also provides an opportunity to verify that installed equipment complies with design standards or customer requirements. It allows for any necessary changes before the facility is put into production. During this process, you'll want to confirm that all infrastructure equipment has been tested successfully before subjecting it to full operational loads; this will help ensure reliable performance in your new data center environment.

A green data center plan will save time, money, and the environment.

Innovative and environmentally-friendly IT strategies can help reduce energy consumption and increase reliability, uptime, and worker productivity. You can improve efficiency while lowering costs by leveraging green data center design best practices. When it comes to sustainability efforts within an organization's infrastructure, many companies find that a dedicated team of sustainability professionals is one of their best investments toward achieving both goals. In 2050 the EU claims to net zero carbon and greenhouse gas emissions.

Conclusion

You can design a green data center to be energy efficient and environmentally friendly, so it’s worth the investment. We recommend working with a company that can help you plan and prepare the ideal facility for your needs.