Re: DATACENTER: Cooling and Cost Data for Web Hosting Data Centers

[Ken Woods <kwoods@verio.net>]

On Wed, 8 Dec 1999, W Halls wrote:

> To what specs are people designing web hosting data center cooling for
> ? 30/60/90W/sq foot ?

Depends on your power consumption load. 
Duh.  Obviously.
How much power do you use per rack?

> Also, is there a pointer to some benchmark data for the construction
> costs for these data centers ? I have seen estimates from 300$/sq foot
> all the way to $1000/sq foot with the variation based mostly on power
> and cooling

While those numbers are *extremely* high, I would caution you that your
question can't be answered until you answer this:  How much money are you
going to loose if the power goes out for an hour?

You _can_ build a datacenter for $200/sq ft.  You can build a facility to
mirror NORAD for $2000/sq ft.  Somewhere in between that is an
"acceptable" number.   For a dark shell, with you just doing TI work, I'd
use $275-300/sq ft.  

You're in California, correct?  I can give you the name/number of several
AE and GC firms, alot of whom work in the Bay Area.

> What net square foot of raised floor to overall gross square foot
> ratios are people seeing ? i.e how many cabinets or racks per square
> foot ?

40 cabinets per 1000 sq ft.
47.5 racks per 1000 sq ft.

(Note:  These are _NOT_ numbers that my employer uses, so don't think that
just becuase I've said it, that those are the numbers they use....I've got
my own brain, dammnit!!!! :))

-- 
Ken Woods
kwoods@verio.net