Raised Floor Labeling Ideas to Improve Uptime

- Ken Koty, sales engineer for PDU Cables (www.pducables.com) and former data center facilities manager for Thomsen Reuters, says:
Labeling, a worthy obsession
I’ve had people call me obsessive compulsive, anal retentive and other not so flattering names in my data center career, but when it came to managing a mission critical facility and ensuring continuous uptime, being a little controlling is a good thing. 

One of my more obsessive traits involved labeling. 

Most of you are aware of the importance of having labeled power whips in a raised floor environment.  But there are many other things in a data center raised floor area that should also be labeled.  Proper labeling can prove very helpful when trying to locate infrastructure under the raised floor in a hurry. 

Let me share with you some of the areas where labeling really provides big benefits, yet very few data centers actually implement. 

Smoke Detectors

If you have smoke detectors under your raised floor I highly recommend adding some type of label on the raised floor panel right above it.  There is any number of ways to mark the panel; we used a template to router a big red X with the detector number on it.  A large floor plan layout is put at all the exit doors with the location of each detector on it.  That way if a detector was in alarm, we knew its exact location, and finding the right floor panel to pull was much easier once it was labeled. 

CRAC/CRAH Water Supply and Return Valves

Labeling your water supply and return valves to the CRAC/CRAH units can be a real time saver in the event of a water leak.  Every second can mean gallons of water under your raised floor, which can shut down your data center in a heartbeat.  We used a template to router a big blue V on each floor panel with a water value under it.  Each valve had a brass tag indicating which A/C unit it fed and whether it was a supply or return valve. 

Electrical Junction Boxes

If you have any type of electrical junction boxes under your floor, you will want to be able to locate them and also make sure no one puts any servers over them.  We used a template to router a big blue E on each floor panel with an electrical junction box under it. 

Using Multiple Colored Floor Panels

Using a different colored floor panel to create an egress route or pathway to the exit doors was a great safety measure in the event of an emergency.  It can get pretty overwhelming when you find yourself in the middle of a large data center if a fire alarm goes off.  We referred to it as “follow the yellow brick road” to safety.  We also would use different colored tile around our PDU’s and CRAC/CRAH units to let everyone know there was a code clearance requirement around certain electrical equipment.  Nothing could be left or stored on any colored floor panels.

These are just a few of the ways we manipulated and labeled our raised floor panels to ensure that if an emergency presented itself, we were prepared to deal with the problem as quickly as possible.  For us a little obsessive compulsive behavior paid off in 12 consecutive years of continuous uptime.

Should Your Floor Be Raised?

- Robert Neave is a Co-founder and Vice President of Sustainable IT Initiatives at nlyte Software (www.nlyte.com)


Why are we hearing more about raised floors not being used in the
data center?
There has always been an issue with the fixed size of the plenum (raised floors space) within datacenters and its usage. The plenum is traditionally used to push the cooled air to devices and for the placement of datacenter services such as network and power cables. These two contradicting usages of the same space place an increasing strain on the datacenters ability to function efficiently. Rarely are data centers built from the ground up as data centers. In many cases data centers are just repurposed rooms. Depending on the room, it can be less expensive to implement overhead cooling and cable management than installing a raised floor. We suspect that cost is why we are hearing about more data centers being constructed without raised floors.

Can you save costs?
Yes & No, some designers will argue that by removing the plenum you limit the expense of heavy plant to cool the datacenter and the costs of under floor maintenance, while other designers will argue that you have just moved the maintenance pains and cost to above the floor or rack.

Can you run cables easily?
Companies that have designed their data center without a plenum are using above cabinet cooling units and ceiling-mounted cable trays to address the issue of not having a raised floor. In some cases, we see these
ceiling-mounted strategies used in data centers that also have raised floors to increase capacity. In these centers out of capacity, adding additional cooling units and cable trays above the floor can be the easiest and least expensive solution to their problem. When considering the physical labor required to pull cable in the data center, the raised floor is a better choice because it eliminates the need for multiple people on ladders to get the job done.

Advantages and Disadvantages?
There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches. For example, very few data centers rooms we built from the ground up to support data center equipment, they are standard rooms that have been repurposed for data center support. If these rooms have high ceilings, it can be very expensive to get the overhead cooling close enough to the tops of the cabinets to effectively cool the equipment. In these cases, a raised floor approach might be the better choice.

Raised floor can be a very expensive proposition in large data centers. There are people that claim that raised
flooring creates a security issue for entering a data center undetected. In many cases, when data centers are reconfigured, the existing cabling is left in place because it is cheaper to leave it than to pull it out. Over time,
this practice can interfere with the air flow under the floor and reduce the cooling capacity of the data center.

What do you recommend if an IT manager is planning a data center renovation or move soon?
A complete model of the datacenter and an inventory of the all affected equipment captured within an affective DCIM tool; "you can model changes athousand times within a DCIM tool, but you can only want to layout a data center once".

When considering a DCIM solution to help you decide which approach is best for your company, (raised floor or above cabinet cooling and cabling), you need to choose one that uses a real-world approach to visualizing your data center assets. Most of the DCIM solutions in the marketplace do a great job mapping the data center floor, but only GDCM's nlyte models the data center as a cube. With nlyte, assets under the floor, on the walls, and above the cabinets are visually modeled in their exact location, providing better management and planning regardless of your strategy for cooling and cable management.

Raised Flooring in the Data Center: Advantages and Disadvantages

- Steve Hambruch, Data Center Architect at Data Center Resources (www.datacenterresources.com), says:

Are raised floors a way to save costs?
This approach has the ability to save considerable CapEx and OpEx dollars. First, the raised floor itself is a considerable expense in new build-outs, and the efficiency gains afforded by row based cooling or ducted air side/water side economizers can dramatically reduce operational costs.

What are the advantages and disadvantages?

Advantages: In general, much higher heat densities can be supported for typical rack mount server equipment as opposed to a traditional raised floor. These environments also typically present lower construction costs, operational costs and faster ROI than traditional raised floor environments. They also encourage more effective cable management.
Disadvantages: It is generally not as effective for rooms that support heterogeneous platforms including large storage appliances, mainframe equipment, and other equipment that is designed to work in a raised floor environment. A major renovation project is typically required to convert an existing room. In some high density environments, studies have shown raised floor plenums actually outperform non-plenum overhead cooling due to better overall distribution of the cooled air.

Data Center managers should pay careful attention to what types of devices the room will be expected to support over its useful life cycle. Specifically, what are the cooling characteristics of these devices? Non plenum rooms allow for very innovative row based cooling for rack mount servers that draw air from the front and exhaust it from the back. However if there will be equipment that is designed to draw air from the bottom and exhaust through the top or sides, such as mainframe equipment and most large storage appliances, special consideration would have to be given to cooling these devices in a non plenum space.

Also, it is important to note that simply removing the raised floor from the design is insufficient. It must be part of a holistic design that incorporates an optimized cooling system design, aisle containment, fire suppression, and many other factors.

What do you recommend if an IT manager is planning a data center renovation or move soon?
I recommend that they enlist the services of a qualified design consultant to help them determine the best strategy for their particular needs. There is no silver bullet in data center design. Each room is as unique as a fingerprint, and while the trend towards non-plenum rooms is evident, it does not mean that it will be the best suited solution for a specific data center.

Raised Flooring in the Data Center: Fad or Trend?

- Steve Yellen, Vice President of Product/Market Strategy, Aperture (www.aperture.com), says:


Are raised floors a trend in the data center? Or a fad?

It’s not a fad. A Research Note released in December 2009, by the Aperture Research Institute found that 83 percent of data center managers are interested in monitoring temperature and humidity sensors in their data centers and 76 percent were interested in monitoring CRAC units. The ARI interpreted this to be a reflection of how cooling capacity is increasingly becoming a constraint on data center capacity and uptime.

Systems are becoming more and more dense, forcing IT managers to take a different approach to cooling, including the installation of systems within the row. This eliminates the biggest reason for using a raised floor in the first place. Having said that, we will continue to see raised floor designs for facilities that can operate with cool air delivered under the floor.

What are the advantages and disadvantages?

The key advantages for the slab are lower cost of construction and more available space. The slab is more stable, which is important in locations prone to earthquakes, and also easier to keep clean and relatively dust-free. In terms of disadvantages, the common concern is accessibility of cables mounted overhead and the inconvenience of using a step ladder.

If an IT manager is planning a data center renovation or move soon, what do you currently recommend?

There isn’t an easy answer to that question. They need to understand their data center density and their need for future capacity. A renovation that removes a raised floor can be costly and may not make sense, even if the data center requires in-row or in-rack cooling. If moving to a new facility, it makes sense to evaluate both options. If precision cooling is necessary, it may make sense to consider a facility without raised floors.

Data Center Flooring

- Bob Cogan, managing partner at Pro Access Floors (www.proaccessfloors.com), says:

What maintenance and/or cleaning needs to be done on data center flooring and flooring accessories?

First and foremost is to determine the contamination level in the equipment room or data center to see if it meets Federal Standard 209e. This is done for air quality particulate testing, with special metering devices to monitor the .5 and 5 micron particle sizes per the above 209e standard.

Other ranges can be tested, as required. This report is given before and again after the cleaning process for comparison of before and after results. NOTE: Some sites to forego this step and go directly to the cleaning process.

What’s the best way to do it?

With a contract by experts who are cognizant of the direct cause and effect relationship between contamination and the different hardware failures. Too often many MIS professionals do not perceive the danger in contamination, especially those cases in which it is not visible to the naked eye. Until it is too late and a disaster occurs!

What should you look for when finding a professional to perform the maintenance for you?

Use a professional who:

1)Can provide references and has been in this niche business for at least 5 years and licensed in their home state.

2) Uses employees who are on their payroll and have been trained to work around operating computer equipment, comply with drug free work policy, who have cleared the police and terrorist watch list.

3) Can provide documentation of complete insurance coverage for General Liability, Excess Liability and Workmen's Compensation.

4) Can comply with all Federal, State & Company safety regulations and have passed OSHA/HAZCOM compliance program.

Common Data Center Flooring Issues

- Tom Turner, product manager of grounding and bonding and power connectors at PANDUIT (www.panduit.com), says:

Many data centers have loose busbar connectors. One reason that they loosen has to do with how the grounding cable (conductor) attaches to the connector. There are two options. First, mechanical connectors have a set screw that the installer bolts onto the conductor to hold it in place. The other type, known as compression connectors, has a barrel that the conductor slides into. Once in the connector, the installer uses a special tool to permanently deform the barrel to the conductor. The advantage of mechanical connectors is that they can be installed with a simple screwdriver or Allen wrench. The disadvantage of mechanical connectors is that they tend to loosen over time, requiring periodic maintenance. While compression connectors require special installation tooling, they never loosen, and so are preferred for telecommunications grounding applications.

Most industry-recognized telecommunications grounding design standards require that two-hole compression lugs be used on busbars. However, in practice, many one-hole mechanical lugs are used. So, the recommendation is to always specify “two-hole compression connectors on all telecommunications grounding busbars.” If you already have one-hole or mechanical busbar lugs and you cannot replace them, plan to re-torque the busbar attachment bolts and the conductor set screws every six months to make sure the connections stay tight.

Besides loose connections, another common problem is missing grounding connections. Most data centers have some form of bonding grid beneath the access floor. The bonding grid is recognized as the bare copper electrical wires that run throughout the length of the floor. This grid needs to be periodically bonded to the access floor, the cable pathways, the grounding busbar, and to most of the other large metal items in the room. Sometimes, the jumper wires that are used to connect the conductive surfaces are either not installed or taken off during a data center renovation and not replaced. Problems can be eliminated by utilizing infrastructure components that automatically create electrical bonds when assembled without the need for bonding jumpers.

Panduit addresses the risks inherent in complicated grounding systems like those found in data centers by designing our pathways, racks, and cabinets to be electrically continuous without the need for bonding conductors to connect their structural elements. In parts of the grounding system where grounding conductors are still required, Panduit offers kits with features like pre-terminated two-hole compression lugs. Use of these kits helps ensure that best-in-class installation practices are used so that your risk and maintenance requirements are significantly reduced.

Static Control Flooring in the Data Center: Knock Out The Charge

- David Long, president of Staticworx (www.staticworx.com), says:

It is important to point out a key distinction about static control flooring in data centers; research has shown that there are only two forms of static control flooring capable of reducing static charges on people when they are wearing regular shoes. EC rubber and static control carpet. The same studies have shown that significant amounts of static can be generated on people wearing standard footwear while walking on static control vinyl, conductive/dissipative epoxy and static dissipative high pressure laminates.

Carpet also prevents static generation, but it is rarely used around servers and storage equipment due to air contamination from loose fibers and its tendency to trap dirt and other contamination. One further detractor is the difficulty rolling systems and castor chairs over carpet.