7x24 Magazine 2015 Spring_6fx

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relation to many providers’
sustainability claims in which “built to
LEED standards” has replaced actual
certification. Once again this failure
on the part of providers to validate
their own claims negatively impacts
the customers they wish to serve. By
failing to provide objective evidence
of their adherence to the
documented standard they weaken
the foundation upon which their
prospective customers seek to make
their decision. Your can verify a
provider’s LEED assertions at
MY DATA CENTER IS FULLY
TESTED—ISN’T IT?
Commissioning is a multi-staged
process that is designed to ensure
that a data center operates as
designed. Unfortunately,
commissioning is often viewed as a
“would be nice to have” event.
However, if we compare
commissioning to test flying a new
aircraft for the first time, it is easy to
see that obtaining space in a fully
commissioned facility is a customer’s
best protection against catastrophic
and costly site outages.
Commissioning consists of five levels,
with levels four and five being the
most important for our discussion
here. Level 4 commissioning consists
of fully testing each component of
the data center’s equipment to ensure
that each piece operates as required.
Level 5 commissioning is the essential
component of the commissioning
process since all of the site’s systems
are tested on an integrated basis at
both peak loads and in a variety of
failure scenarios to ensure that all of
the data center’s systems work as
designed. As we shall see, the most
critical aspect of Level 5
commissioning is ensuring that the
site is able to surmount critical
failures, such as a power outage, to
maintain the operations necessary to
support a mission critical
environment.
The functional design of a data center
is intricately intertwined with its ability
to complete the full five levels of the
commissioning process. Many data
center alternatives use a single MEP
backplane. Analogous to a power
strip, each new data center is
“plugged into” the backplane as it is
added. Although commonly used,
architectural designs with “future
growth phases” based on this
concept can only complete the first
four levels of the commissioning
process. This is due to the fact that,
just as when the power is turned off
to the power strip, the failure mode
scenarios required in Level 5 cannot
be performed since turning off the
power brings down all of the
attached data centers during
expansion.
The other alternative in backplane
design is to use discrete backplanes
for each data center. In this structure
each data center operates
independently from its companions.
As a result, new data centers can be
fully Level 5 commissioned since
simulating a power failure for testing
does not negatively impact any
existing data hall. Thus, the
backplane structure of a data center
solution determines its ability to
undergo a complete commissioning
process when expansion is necessary.
This is one of the potential hazards of
“modular” building in large shared
environments – you cannot level 5
test future phases within the existing
live environment.
Failure to complete a full Level 5
commissioning process is analogous
to purchasing a product that is only
90% complete. Operating your new
facility on faith is akin to flying in that
untested airplane. Sure, it may fly, but
wouldn’t you feel better knowing that
it would before you boarded?
HOT WORK
In many instances, standards provide
insurance for both the customer and
the site’s operations personnel. Over
the past few years, the intense need
to maximize the uptime of a facility
has been used by many providers to
justify an increasing level of “hot
work”. This means that many
operations that would normally be
performed in a non-powered
environment are now done on live
components. These actions are both
dangerous and against the law.
One of the most common by-
products of these instances where
work is performed on energized
equipment is a phenomenon referred
to as arc flash. The National Institute
by Chris Crosby