Customer Reviews

Build the Best Data Center Facility for Your Business

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Setting up a data center is easy. Except that the first time you do it you're going to screw up badly. In order to make as much sense as he does, the writer of this book must have screwed up several installations. It's clear that he knows whereof he speaks.

There are only a couple of areas that I'd stress more highly. He talks of power and cooling. A lot of people used such figures, especially people who were setting up big co-location centers. Then these new 1U and 2U servers started coming out, and the number of watts per square foot or meter skyrocketed. Watts were a direct measure of power needed, and in turn of the amount of cooling needed. It also seems that every new Intel processor needs more power. The new Pentium D takes about 140 watts. Four of them in a 2U cabinet is over 600 watts per unit (adding a little for other stuff). 24 of these in a rack is 14,400 watts in about a square meter. The highest rating he shows is 2,000 watts per square meter. Do some calculating before you design.

The next thing I'd add is put your backup center a long ways away from your primary center, like maybe in Europe. A fully redundant center in the same building when an earthquake/bomb/hurricane/fire cuts off power/telephone or whatever does you no good. You might want to outsource this secondary site, just as he says. Or maybe you can put it in the London office and get a good excuse to go visit once in a while.

This book is just about the best summary of data center facility design I've seen.

This CiscoPress book is quite an outsider compared to other more classical CiscoPress material. It does not talk about networking itself but about how to build

the physical infrastructure to host a data center, focusing on several areas such as temperature control, electrical and networking availability, or simply explains how to choose between raised floor or ceiling installations... The author of the book manages over 40 data centers all around the world, so you will find every now and then a text box with Douglas' tips or field experiences, which are

very valuable.

The first 9 chapters focus on designing and implementing a data center, from choosing an ideal site and sizing it right, tips on how to present the project to the executives and getting their approval, selecting the contractors who will build the data center etc.

It goes on a chapter at the time talking about the cooling infrastructure, the electrical layout and sizing, the most efficient network layout for both copper and fiber cabling.

The layout of the room is discussed all over these chapters explaining to the reader why not to put all small servers in the same rack (which could be a problem for eletrical and networking availability, heat generation or/and weight), or why the racks must align with floor tiles, how to creare cold and warm rows... Several layout examples are given showing their weaknesses and strengths.

Structural issues are discussed, such as problems with building the room on an upper floor compared to a ground floor, proximity to electromagnetic fields, to heavily polluted areas, or to sismic areas.

Guidelines for employees behaviour in the data center are also stated, with examples of what could happen if these rules are not strictly followed..

The remaining 6 chapters focus on how to get the best out of your data center and to keep it working at its best. Exemples of signage and labeling are shown to

help out the users do the right thing even in emergency situations. Douglas migth seem maniacal about labeling, but my own experience can confirm all he says...label everything!

Items to have in stock and everyday tools are listed to remind us which things should never be missing to help avoiding situations where system administrators cannot complete their job because of a missing patch cord or screwdriver.

Monitoring and professional room cleaning are the last two items discussed in the book and Douglas' experience is very valuable in both areas to give us some tips.

I found this book very interesting since I am running a data center that needs retrofitting soon and Douglas' experiences might come very handy to me. The language is very easy to follow as with most CiscoPress books, which is important for non-English people!

When individuals consider recent events from natural disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes to terrorist attacks like September 11th, not to mention new government regulations within areas like HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley the need to secure organizations information is becoming more critical. Thus an organizations desire to design and/or construct a data center that will meet these needs has increased.

With in the book "Building the Best Data Center Facility for Your Business" by Douglas Alger guidance for items that need to be considered are presented in a detailed format. The general population and most companies assume that they can set a computer room or data area up without any issues or difficulties, hence it is always assumed that if you have knowledge of Server and Network design and someone that has an understanding of construction you can do it. But when you design a Data Center and consider items like power usage and cooling needs, you need to consider other items like fire suppression and redundant power sources. Within Alger's book we see items that most computer engineers will take for granted like raised flooring, and HVAC (cooling). But we also see items that some may consider common sense like generator power and supply guidance for fueling these generators.

This book I found an excellent baseline and for as the author said in the introductory pages "Setting up a data center is easy. Except that the first time you do it you're going to screw up badly." Hence as I read this book I found myself returning to discussions and implementations I did a few years ago and could see where we made mistakes and learned from them. Alger was correct in his statement and I was further able to reflect in my mind on the discussions that we had on items that included spacing and area needed for computers and networks then on topics like power utilization and cooling needs where always being considered. As I mentioned Alger's book provided me with reflections and will provide anyone reading it individuals with the needed initial guidance on either building or what to consider when improvements both a computer rooms or a data centers. While this book may appear small at only 374 pages including the index, its detail and guidance will add to anyone's knowledge or needs.

Some of the information and definitions like what is a "U" and the difference between DC and AC power are discussed ,but also items like how to properly clean the room with pH neutral items and services as well as how to gather metrics only enhance the books value and understanding. While the book does limit itself to certain rack sizes and power utilizations not comparable with newer equipment occurring today, it does provide an excellent guideline.

I can only hope that you like myself find the book informative and consider it, if nothing more than a guidance on how to work with a proper computer room and data center environment.

This is an excellent intorduction to facilities considerations for the data center. I think it would be very useful for an IT professional to get a sound understanding of the scope for the physical layer. There is little comprehensive material available today on this aspect of data center planning and management.

Its refreshing to see an IT manufacturer taking the initiative to address the facilities impacts that arise from the equipment they offer. Most IT vendors out there today leave this up to the customer. Its clear from reading this that Cisco and the author in particular understand this pain and are taking steps to alleviate it. This publication is a customer satisfaction home run in my eyes.

There is a entertaining aspect to this book as well in the real world stories drawn from the authors experience that help to drive home what can happen when to little attention is paid to arguebly the most critical layer of the data center.

We are in the process of purchasing multiple copies of this book for distribution to our data center, IT, application and network managers.

Although somewhat dated these days, this book and Rob Snevely's Enterprise Data Center Design and Methodology (Sun BluePrints, The Official Sun Microsystems Resource Series) are two very good primers on planning modern data centers. What we need now is a good guide to energy efficiency.

As a introductory primer, this book is passable. As a systems engineer, it offered what I'd term "common sense". There were some formulas to make calculations but not enough, in my opinion, to justify the price. I have not downloaded the online materials yet (including the promised data center design diagrams), but the examples in the book are laughably obvious (at least to a tech).

If you are an executive, this book would be an good resource. Technicians, particularly those with a few years exposure to different data center environments, will find the content mostly redundant. There are a few bright spots, but not enough.

This book is good but misses or skirts over several important issues.

Does not talk about tiers and what they mean, does not talk much about

electrical amd mechanical infrastructure and redundancy. Focuses on details

which are useful to know but miss the big picture.

Have you wander why one person rates the same book with five while another person with one star. The rating system is subjective, that's why. When you buy the book at brick and mortar store you can return pages and make your purchasing decision. At Amazon.com you have only few pages you can view. It would be great if Amazon gives its readers a better opportunity. Please do read comments and person's background then compare with your needs.

As far as this book concerns I gave 5 stars for a beginner reader's use. But this book is not a design manual for Data Centers and it is a very task to write a manual. It involves Electrical Engineering, Information System, Mechanical Engineering, Fire Suppression, and Local and National Codes knowledge to create a manual.