cost model 73

Data centres
In this month's engineering
services cost model, Davis
Langdon Mott Green Wall
reviews the principles of
data centre design and look
at the implications for the
services costs

Demand for data centres slowed after the

dotcom crash of 2000, but facilities in London
are now reported to be bursting at the seams,
with rack space at a premium.
It has been estimated that demand for data
centres is growing at about 30% per year. A
recent survey found most operators in the UK
are already close to capacity, and the sector is
set for significant long-term growth. This is due
to the greater use of corporate websites and
the insatiable demand for internet services, the
development of high band-width services, and
of organisations looking to outsource their
data processing work to reduce costs.
The cost model concentrates on co-location
centres, which provide serviced space for rent
with guaranteed uninterrupted operation of
tenants' equipment and access to multiple, primary optical fibre networks.
Co-location centre requirements are very
specific. A resilient, secure data centre is based
on interdependencies. Like a jigsaw, where
every piece matters, each system and process
in construction of a data centre must be
analysed so there is no one point of weakness
to compromise its operation.
A typical data centre has at least 20 major

mechanical, electrical, fire protection, security

and other systems, each of which has subsystems and components, and all of which must be
concurrently maintainable and/or fault-tolerant
in order for the entire site to be considered the
same. This means providing redundancy of
plant to maintain system operation, and care
must be taken to ensure this investment is not
applied to the wrong parts of the system,
resulting in ineffective expenditure.
One of the most common sources of confusion in relation to the design of data centres is
the definition of reliability and availability (ie a
system's forecast downtime). With the explosive
growth of the internet comes increased
demand for computer hardware reliability.
Information technology customers expect
availability of 99.999%, but it is doubtful that
even the most thoroughly designed infrastructure system can support such a figure.
A tiered classification for site infrastructure
functionality has been developed to provide a
common standard. This is summarised in Table 1
(overleaf). Under this system, measured availability ranges from 99.671% for tier 1 systems
to 99.995% for tier 4 systems.
Co-location centres are either tier 3 or 4, and

it is important the degree of risk (and hence the

levels of protection and redundancy) is balanced with cost and that the design satisfies
the operational requirements of the building
and the business objectives of the operator.
Using Figure 1 as a backdrop, there are several key design issues, the first of which is the
site. From a services point of view, there are
three core business determinants: location,
power and communications.
The location should be as free as possible
from natural and man-made risks (ie flooding,
adverse weather conditions, proximity to
potentially polluting sites etc), and close to
major clients.
There should be a reliable, high capacity
electrical power supply or supplies. The nature
and number required will depend on the levels
of reliability and resilience to be provided. Not
every part of the national grid is capable of
delivering these requirements, and constraints
on the available power supply may have significant effects on cost and programme.
Proximity to good, diverse high band-width
fibre links, from multiple tier 1 suppliers, is key
in providing the diversity that ensures the
resilience essential to operators and tenants.

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Availability, size and

security of payer supply
is now the major selling
point for data centres

Conversion of warehouse, industrial and

office space allows facilities to be completed
quickly, but there is a finite supply of suitable
buildings in the right locations, so purposebuilt projects are becoming the norm.
Phasing of the development, allowing expansion without affecting the operation of the
completed space, is important to the viability
of a scheme. There are two main approaches to
providing flexibility in the services installation.
Central distribution: where the complete primary distribution network is installed as part of
the initial phase, but plant is only brought on
line in response to tenant demand. Although
the services disruption is minimised, the initial
investment is high.
Modular services: by providing local distribution networks encompassing all critical services
including primary and secondary distribution,
services are only installed to areas on demand.
This minimises up-front investment and
improves the degree of resilience through the
creation of stand-alone systems. Disadvantages
include the need to link the modules and the
greater complexity of installation work.
There are key prerequisites for construction
of the data centre itself that have an impact on
the design of the services.
Ideally a freestanding building with a boundary perimeter and vehicle access control, allowing good perimeter security.
Equipment rooms distanced both horizontally and vertically from internal water services
and areas such as toilets and kitchens.
Secure reception and site perimeter access
infrastructure with visitor parking away from
the building and ideally no car parking beneath.
Plant/storage space for standby generation,
dual utility entry points with diverse physical
routing, UPSs, fire suppressant cylinders,
equipment configuration before installation,
admin areas etc.
Appropriate width and load capacity access
route from exterior to equipment rooms.
Use of smaller segmented equipment rooms
with fire separation between and communications/power distribution, air-conditioning,

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fire suppression etc that is resilient to the loss

of another equipment room.
In terms of communications within the building, good practice requires:
Separate communications termination rooms
to allow different providers access without the
need for entry into other areas.
Servers with multiple network interface
cards for dual (high speed) local area network
(LAN) connection resilience.
Dual LAN switches, patching and cabling.
Switches and routers that support hot swap of
redundant power and network interface cards
are desirable.
Comprehensive network monitoring and
alert facilities, which may include external
monitoring.

Electrical services

high voltage switchgear. However, it is normally

more cost-effective to provide resilience and
redundancy at the level of low voltage
switchgear, UPS and standby generation,
avoiding the need to invest in additional high
voltage panels and cabling. Tenants are provided with a secure supply through connections to
two switchgear, UPS and standby power modules. This principle of duplication can be
extended upward to dual main supplies, and
downward to the final supply connections to
each rack, which can be doubled-up and fed
from different PDUs.
Provision of UPS and standby generation.
The UPS provision in co-location centres is
much higher than on conventional buildings.
Almost the entire electrical load is critical,
which means no break in supply or load shedding is permitted. Static battery UPS systems
are the preferred option, although more
expensive rotary systems, which combine
standby generation with UPS functionality, are
becoming more common. Rotary UPS systems
are 5-10% more expensive than an equivalent
battery UPS and generator but need less space.

Traditionally, the primary cost unit for a colocation centre was floor space. Now it is electrical power.
The availability, size and security of the power supply is the major selling point of a co-location centre. Power loads of 800-l,000W/m 2 are
available, but many operators are looking to
increase this to l,200-l,500W/m 2 . This standard represents the maximum theoretical load
if the technical areas were filled to capacity. In
practice, below-optimum use of rack space and
diversity of server operation mean this limit
may not be approached.

Key issues for mechanical services design are:

cooling loads
diversity and security of supply
environmental control
The IT equipment housed in data centres
produces huge quantities of heat and is intolerant of temperature or humidity fluctuations, so
these parameters need to be closely controlled.
Cooling loads of 800-l,000W/m 2 are the norm,
rising to l,200-l,500W/m 2 for the latest generation of data centres.

Development of blade servers, allowing more

muscle to be packed into existing racks, has
contributed to the increasing power demands.
Whereas a typical rack has a load of about 2kW,
a rack full of new blade servers requires about
15kW of power, and so packing these into the
space previously occupied by conventional
racks significantly increases the power requirements per unit area.
The main design issues associated with the
electrical design are:
Resilience strategies. These are based on
eliminating potential single points of failure, by
duplication where appropriate. A common
approach involves providing dual supplies into

While improved efficiency means fewer

processors are needed for a given output, packing them into racks to increase power provision
increases overall cooling load. Cooling system
failure would rapidly result in IT equipment failure, so requirements for standby capacity are
exacting for tier 3 and 4 installations (see Table
1). Redundancy is provided through the whole
installation, at chiller plant, chilled water distribution and close control units.
Other important points are:
Careful attention should be paid to airflow to
eliminate hot-spots. Also, as the room is populated the air flow and hot-spots may change
and this needs to be taken into account.

Mechanical services

75 cost model

Positive pressurisation should be provided

to technical areas to minimise dust ingress.
With racks densely packed with equipment
such as blade servers, a 19-inch rack could generate up to 20kW of heat. Conventional cooling, where air is drawn through the racks by
fans, struggles to deal with these kinds of
loads, so direct cooling of the racks using
chilled water or liquid carbon dioxide may be
required.
Leak detection needs to be provided where
any liquids pass through the technical areas.

Fire protection
Key issues for the fire protection system are:
Using VESDA systems that can detect very
early signs of a fire risk.
Gas suppression systems are commonly
specified but can be costly. The space must be
sealed to prevent gas escape, it must maintain
its integrity during discharge and there must be
a means of evacuating the gas afterwards.
Standard sprinkler systems are not used in
the technical areas, but water mist systems are
common. Provided the power is automatically
isolated and the water is pure, the equipment is
often unaffected once thoroughly dried. It
offers the advantages of localised activation
and gentle discharge. Water-based systems
should not hold water in the pipework unless
activated and activation should be on a per
head basis.
It is prudent to divide a data centre into separate technical areas with fire breaks between
and running off separate infrastructure to allow
containment of disaster effects.
Consideration should be given to a fire suppression system that can be triggered more
than once without the need for repriming.

Security
Security installations dealing with intrusion and
access control are necessarily extensive. As well
as physical barriers at the site and building
perimeters, there should be access control
within the building. Voids in floor and ceiling
zones should be secured to prevent unauthorised access.
Intensive CCTV installations linked to intruder detection will include monitoring of tenants'
areas. CCTV coverage of every aisle in technical
areas is becoming increasingly common.
Access control systems in co-location centres

use high technology solutions. Physical control

is provided by a series of 'man-traps' linked to
scanners reading ID cards, palms etc. Doors
controls limit access to technical spaces, and
racks and cabinets are lockable, with keys
tracked by database systems.

Energy efficiency
There is a view that the increasing divergence
between rapid server computing performance
gains, which increase by a factor of three every
two years, and the far slower improvement in
energy efficiency, may soon call into question
the economic productivity of the co-location
data centre.
While power consumption per unit drops,
consumption actually increases, which results
in rapidly escalating electricity and site infrastructure costs for every server deployed, to
the point where these exceed the revenue
potential from letting the space.
This continued growth in power requirements may see buildings running out of power
and/or cooling capacity to meet this demand,
leading to an unplanned capital investment to
expand an existing centre or indeed build a
new one. The long-term solution is to improve
energy efficiency by at least equal the rate of
computational performance increase, through
higher energy efficiency of IT hardware components (increased research and development)
and the elimination of energy wastage (good
practice).
This will ultimately result in development of a
brief for a green data centre, identifying and

optimising energy performance factors from all

sectors of the industry including user organisations, manufacturers and services designers.

Cost breakdown (overleaf)

The cost model is based on an 8,500m2 twostorey co-location development, with all technical space fully fitted out up to and including
the PDUs, ready for the tenants' racks.
Costs exclude the incoming dual feed high
voltage 6MVA supply. This depends on availability, but could run into millions of pounds.
Co-location buildings are relatively simple,
but the services installation needs to be carefully considered to deliver a cost-effective
solution that is straightforward to maintain and
adapt. Detailed design of the services is essential for co-ordination purposes, and to contribute to the identification and elimination of
single points of failure at an early stage. Hence,
projects are typically let on a lump sum basis to
specialist contractors on a fully detailed design.
Early orders are required on long lead-in items
such as chillers and generators, especially as
these are likely to be large capacity. Full testing
and commissioning is critical to the handover
of the project and the programme allowance
for this should not be compromised.
Exclusions to the cost model Include: Inflation beyond
second quarter 2007; general builders' work; specialist
builders' work (blast protection, screening for electromagnetic Interference); tenant fit-out; electrical utility
supplies; main contractor's overheads, profit & attendance; main contractor's preliminaries; professional fees;

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76 cost model
Cost b r e a k d o w n
Item

Unit

Quantity

Rate

Total

Disposal and w a t e r installations

Rainwater goods; downpipes and gutters

m2

8,500

51,000

Soil, waste and vent

m2

8,500

76,500

Condensate drainage from ACUs and FCUs

m2

8,500

51,000

Hot and cold water services

Item

127,500

127,500

Chilled water plant with redundancy of N+1 to provide 1000W/m 2 cooling to the technical space

Item

2,040,000

2,040,000

Chilled water distribution to data centre to freestanding to freestanding cooling units with associate

Item

2,987,200

2,987,200

Supply and extract ventilation to technical space, switchrooms and ancillary spaces, including grilles and diffusers

Item

2,120,000

2,120,000

Freestanding room air-conditioning units with redundancy of N+20% to technical space and switchrooms

Item

1,657,500

1,657,500

Air-conditioning to offices areas; two pipe fan coil with electric reheat

m2

550

210

115,500

Communications room cooling

Item

7,500

7,500

Toilet extract installation; kitchen extract system

Item

27,500

27,500

Gaseous and smoke extract systems to technical spaces complete

m2

5,100

10

51,000

High voltage switchgear, transformers and distribution based on a requirement of a 6MVA dual supply

Item

500,000

500,000

Main and sub-main installation comprising of switchgear, power factor correction, cabling, busbar and distribution equipment

Item

2,000,000

2,000,000

Low voltage distribution to support areas directly fed from main LV panel

m2

550

18

9,900

Clean earth system; to plantrooms & technical spaces

m2

7,950

10

79,500

PDUs complete with isolating TX and an average of 160 SP outgoing ways, (based on 40 fed from UPS output panel)

Item

1,600,000

1,600,000

Dual power supplies to PDUs (225kVA ave 75m)

Item

750,000

750,000

Emergency power off installation

Item

20,000

20,000

Underfloor power distribution to cabinet locations, based on a requirement of 3,200 cabinets dual fed

Item

2,300,000

2,300,000

Small power distribution to technical spaces for general use

m2

5100

25,500

Small power distribution to plant areas

m2

2850

15

42,750

Small power distribution to support areas; busbar and floorbox to office areas, wall mounted elsewhere

m2

550

35

19,250

Lighting installation

m2

8500

15

127,500

Luminaires and lamps

m2

8500

30

255,000

Extra over for luminaires and lamps to support areas

m2

550

50

27,500

Emergency lighting installation

m2

8500

10

85,000

Power and containment to cooling units in technical spaces, based on a required of 82 units with dual feeds

Item

120,000

120,000

Power and containment to mechanical services in plantrooms

Item

25,000

25,000

Containment in plantrooms; trunking, tray and ladder rack

m2

2850

20

57,000

Power and containment to serve BMS, CCTV and fire alarm system in technical areas

m2

5100

10

51,000

IT containment to technical spaces, based on 600mm basket supported on channel run to cabinet locations

m2

5100

20

102,000

IT containment to support areas, generally

m2

550

15

8,250

Standby generator installation - 5 l,500kVA units, providing N+1 (rate based on 160/kVA)

Item

1,700,000

1,700,000

UPS installation - 1 6 x 800kVA (4 x 3.2MVA) static units, providing full (2N) redundancy; 10 min autonomy (based on 200/kVA)

Item

2,560,000

2,560,000

UPS input/output panels and distribution

Item

1,600,000

1,600,000

Glazed feature lifts; hydraulic; 13 person, serving 2 stops each

Item

80,000

80,000

Passenger/goods lift; hydraulic; 21 person, 1600kg; serving 2 stops; dock leveller

Item

100,000

100,000

Gas installations

Item

40,000

40,000

Earthing and bonding

m2

8500

42,500

Lightning protection

m2

8500

17,000
99,750

Space heating and air t r e a t m e n t

Electrical installations

Protective installations

Pre action sprinkler installation to plant areas

m2

2850

35

Sprinkler installation to offices

m2

550

30

16,500

Gaseous fire suppression system to technical area

m2

5100

220

1,122,000

Leak detection

m2

5100

20

102,000

Communications installations
Fully addressable fire and smoke detection and alarm system to plant and support areas

m2

3400

18

61,200

Allowance for interface of fire and smoke detection system with gaseous extinguishing installation

m2

5100

10,200

VESDA Installation to technical areas

m2

5100

50

255,000

Intruder detection, based on monitored door, windows and PIR detection

m2

8500

42,500

Alarm installation to disabled toilets

Item

1,500

1,500

CCTV installation to technical spaces, based on a full requirement of CCTV in all aisles between cabinets (160 fixed cameras)

Item

650,000

650,000

CCTV installation to plant and support areas

Item

70,000

70,000

Access control system to technical spaces; (25 readers); plant & support areas (18 readers); door entry system to support areas

Item

107,000

107,000

Containment for security system

m2

8500

68,000

Building management system

m2

8500

35

297,500

Extra for enhanced BMS in technical and plant spaces

m2

7950

15

119,250

Electrical monitoring system

m2

8500

50

425,000

Total cost

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27,104,250