Data Center Handbook

10Mechanical Design in Data Centers

John Weale

The Integral Group, Oakland, CA, USA

10.1 Introduction

Data center mechanical design is not inherently complex, but the requirement for high reliability combined with very obvious (and expensive) failure if it is not met adds a degree of challenge not seen in common mechanical design. Against this high-stakes design background, traditional design has leaned heavily on repeating proven legacy designs—often at the expense of innovation that can improve reliability, flexibility, cost, operating efficiency, and other aspects of design quality. The objective of this chapter is to acquaint a mechanical designer with data center design and give them the technical grounding required to move beyond replication of proven, yet often obsolete, designs and into creating optimized solutions that meet the unique requirements of their clients.

The best mechanical designs for data centers show not just skill in system design but also a clear understanding of the fundamental purpose of a data center: to make money. A careful investigation of the design criteria and consideration of their impact on the design help to best serve the actual needs of the client. But, surprisingly, this is often not done. The reliance on reusing old, “proven” designs is often used to justify doing only a cursory investigation of the needs of the current client. Some level of assumption is required to maintain the flexibility to accommodate future, unknown IT equipment ...