is dcom more important than data centre design

1 ©2015 Capitoline Ltd

DESIGN : OPERATIONS : AUDIT : TRAINING www.capitoline.org

Is Data Centre Operations more important than Design ?

Presented by Barry Elliott of Capitoline

This is an extract from a webinar.

If you would like to see the full webinar please contact us at http://www.capitoline.org/ask-an-expert/

or would like a copy of the white paper that accompanies this presentation then please register at http://www.capitoline.org/is-data-centre-management-more-important-than-data-centre-design/

http://www.capitoline.org/ask-an-expert/


http://www.capitoline.org/is-data-centre-management-more-important-than-data-centre-design/





What is important to Data Centre Managers ?

• Reliability• Security• Efficiency• Maintenance• Capacity, growth and upgrades



Reliability - Mean time to failure

From Capitoline’s recent research we found• 219 major data centre failures in 60 months, and that’s just the ones made

public• If we presume this is at best half of all failures then a data centre goes down

somewhere twice a week• And that’s excluding individual equipment failures• Average downtime 12.5 hours per major incident

• From 20 minutes to 8 days• Six of the data centres were considered written-off after fire or flood



Failure mechanismsIf we remove IT problems we can look purely at the Facilities Management problems

Power43%

HVAC7%

Fire21%

Attack9%

Envi-ronment

6%

Un-known/Other

9%

Fire malfunction5%



Design• Better design• More thought about location• Adequate fire suppression methodsOperations• Testing of all systems, not just components• Proper maintenance plans• Monitoring• Business processes

Almost every major failure can be avoided



Designing for Reliability• TIA-942 describes four Ratings of fault tolerance• BICSI-002 and EN50600 describe four Classes of fault tolerance• The UpTime Institute describes four Tiers of fault tolerance

The engineering philosophy in each case is very similar



Designing for resilience

The concept of Ratings/Classes and Tiers in a data centre

Rating 1. Enough items to do the jobRating 2. Redundant itemsRating 3. Concurrently maintainable.

• Any item or path can be taken down for maintenance and the system will still operate

Rating 4. Fault tolerant• The same as Rating 3 but will automatically cope with failures without human

intervention



Managing for resilience

Not having an operational process plan means that even a data centre built to Rating 4 standards will not even operate at Rating 1 reliability levels as things will inevitably go wrong

Fatal Examples • A data centre failed because the standby generator was left in manual rather than automatic

mode. When the power failed, the generators didn’t start. It wasn’t anybody’s job to check this

• A data centre failed because the fire suppression system was set to manual rather than automatic. It burned down. It wasn’t anybody’s job to check this

• A data centre failed because temperature sensors were full of dust. Equipment went into thermal runaway. It wasn’t anybody’s job to check this



Design and Management Standards

Design Standards

• EN 50600• TIA 942• BICSI 002

Management Standards

• ISO 9000• ISO 14000• ISO 27000• ISO 50000• ISO 55000



General ISO management standards aren’t enough

ISO 27000 isn’t enough on its own

ISO 9000Qualitymanagement

ISO 14000Environmental management

ISO 50000Energy management

ISO 55000Asset management

ISO 27000Information security management

DC Energy managementISO 30134EU Code of Conduct EN 50600-4

General management standards Data centre standards

You need EN50600 to prove compliance to Section 11 of ISO 27001/2 “Supporting utilities”

Note that ISO 45001 H&S, will be required. This is currently BS OHSAS 18001



Main causes of failure

• Location• Building architecture• Computer room layout• Power • Cooling• Fire detection and suppression• Data cabling• Physical security• Building Management Systems

What’s important in data centre design?

Covered in detail by

EN 50600 and TIA942

No Single Points of Failure!



What’s important in data centre management?

• Understanding failure mechanisms• Good Housekeeping within the data centre• Optimised equipment layouts• Understanding the power train• BMS and status monitoring• Policies and procedures to manage a data centre• Essential maintenance• Health and safety requirements• Fire policy• Physical Security policy



They are both equally important. Without good design and good operations management we will not have good

• Reliability• Security• Efficiency• Maintenance• Growth and upgrades

Is Data Centre Operations more important than Design ?



physical plant maintenance arrangements

Day-to day operation of

the data centre

DR mode operations

Processes

Equipment & maintenance

manuals

Operations manual

Business continuity

and disaster recovery plan

Documentation

Building and operating a reliable data centre

Understand customer

requirements

Design the data centre

Build the data centre

Delivering the data centre

COMMISSIONING

Designer’s involvement

Operations



So how do you get the right balance ?



IndependentData Centre Consultants

We can help…

TrainingAuditDesignOperations



• Train yourself and your staff in datacentre design and operations

• Align your training with the International Standards

• Look for European Qualification Framework, EQF, approved training

But you can also help yourself…..



Content:• Data Centre spaces• Raised access floors• Racks and location• Cooling• Power• IT grade Earthing• Cable containment• Fire systems• Cabling system design

3 day DCD - Data Centre Design

EN50600

Tiers & ClassesTIA942

EU Code of Conduct

PUEASHRAE



Exercises:• Design a data centre building layout

• What rooms are needed?• Where should they go?

• Design the computer room layout• What is the most efficient rack layout?• Where should the cooling go to maximise efficiency?

• Calculate Cooling requirements• How much cooling do you need?

• Calculate the size of the power systems (generator, UPS etc.)• How much power do you need?• What size should the generator be?• What size should the UPS be?

3 day DCD - Data Centre Design



2 day DCOM - Data Centre Operational Management

• Understand what can go wrong• How you can prevent it happening• Learn how to improve

• Reliability• Efficiency• Security

• What procedures are needed?



2 day DCOM - Data Centre Operational Management



Get Certified

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Capitoline’s DCE - Data Centre Expert qualification is approved as an European Qualification Framework Level 5 Qualification

Capitoline Data Centre Expert Qualification

BICSI recognise DCE training for Continuing Education Credits (CECs)

CIBSE recognise DCE training as Continuing Professional Development (CPD)

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Matt FlowerdayBSC (Hons) Electrical and Electronic

EngineeringMBA

Over 30 years experience18 years owner/CEO of IT/Engineering

integratorFounding partners of Capitoline since 2006

Written training coursesTrained hundreds of data centre staff

Audited over 100 data centresMember of 50600 data centre standard

committeeDesigns and peer reviews of designs for data

centres in UK, Europe, Middle East and Africa

Barry Elliott Instructors



This is an extract from a webinar.

If you would like to see the full webinar please contact us at http://www.capitoline.org/ask-an-expert/

or would like a copy of the white paper that accompanies this presentation then please register at http://www.capitoline.org/is-data-centre-management-more-important-than-data-centre-design/

Thank you for watching




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