Luck is born in the room right next to good, and no one ever knows the difference. With data centers it often comes down to doing what you think is right long term. This usually means well thought planning with potential higher costs up front to reap great benefits in the future.
The majority of colo data centers in the past 20 years have had the air cooled or direct evaporative CRAC’s and UPS’s on the floor next to customer equipment. Companies with walled off and modular designs must run extra expensive wiring and lose sellable space that is dedicated to the cooling units. The name of the game for many is maximize the whitespace that you can charge for.
What about data center providers who dropped their UPS’s in containers to the side of the facilities with the CRAC’s walled off from the whitespace? They’re doing quite well now that AI is a sprouting reality. As the needed requirements change they are able to make adjustments without overhauling equipment directly adjacent to working cabinets. It’s possible to make changes if they need to upgrade to nickel-zinc batteries, or introduce CDU’s.
Chilled water sites have often been avoided due to higher cost and a more complex fit out. Water is cheap so providers are happy to burn it off and pour it out ignoring the idea that water conservation is a real green action not green washing. Data centers that were designed with closed loop systems saved millions if not billions of gallons of water. As luck has it they also have the ability to simply and effectively upgrade any part of their site to a high density AI solution by simply tapping into the pipes already ran under the floor.
The companies moving into data centers are working to create complex systems to solve insanely difficult problems. The builders of the facilities should keep the simple mindset of Davy Crockett written on a post it on their desk ‘Be always sure you are right – then go ahead.’
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