Notes on the makeover and modernization of a little data center that could, if only We’ve all seen the excitement that television shows like Extreme Makeover creates and Oliver Rist and I are working with the University of Hawai’i School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) on Pimping out one of our smaller data centers on the 3rd floor of the Hawai’i Institute of Geophysics (HIG).HIG was chosen for a couple of reasons: ANCL is located in the penthouse and will have our production racks located there when it’s all done. The building (HIG) is an older building, much more typical of what readers might encounter in a legacy building. The data center is actually two old offices combined to house the growing computing needs of the largest school at the University of Hawai’i.So I’m hoping this situation sounds painfully familiar to our readership, and I’ll be posting a series of stories on the grief we’re going through in order to modernize this data center. Key issues we’re dealing with right now are: The plans don’t exist in CAD so we’re having to work off paper plans This building was put up in the late 1960’s and was retrofitted for the new earthquake regulations in the 1990’s. Since this building is a concrete beam on post with concrete slabs laid on the beams, we’ve contracted a mechanical engineer to work with us on floor loading issues. The ceilings are tall, but have large beams protruding downward, so we’ve decided to shy away from a raised floor in favor of ceiling mounted cable raceways instead. The building does NOT have enough “spare” chillwater capacity in its air conditioning plant, which is forcing us to investigate emerging data center cooling systems. In this case we’ll be using the new APC (American Power Conversation) system that will place the cold air where it’s needed and keep the hot and cold air from mixing and thusly increasing the A/C efficiency. The original roof leaked, and has been retrofitted with foam slab insulation overlaid with a composite membrane for waterproofing. Installing heat exchangers on the roof is requiring a roofing contractor to modify the membrane so that we don’t void the roof warranty. We don’t have a real freight elevator in the building, so we’re working with the APC engineers to size the rooftop heat exchangers so that we don’t have to rent a crane to lift the units. Since floor loading, heat and power are always an issue; we’ll be using both the APC and RackWise data center management systems to keep track of these key issues as we load everything up.We’ll turn over as many of the proverbial rocks as we can in hopes that our bleeding over these issue can help our readership in their renovation plans. If you folks have any data center renovation horror stories, toss them in as comments or drop me an email. Please indicate whether you want me to remove any references to your company or not.Stay tuned….same Bat Channel…/brian chee Technology Industry