When you make a decision to build a data center, the first thing you need to do is select a data center consultancy service. Data center consultants help and advice you in all the steps that you need to take towards a fully functioning data center. They start by assisting you in choosing a space that is adequate for your data center, ensure access to ample power supply, cooling, security, and fire protection. Hiring a data center consultant also helps you complete your project within time and budget boundaries.
A data center consultant helps you plan the design of your data center, choose the most suitable solution type for your requirement (Modular, skid, containerized, or end-to-end), and prioritize your workload.
A data center is a mission critical facility, which should not experience any downtime. Every step towards implementing a mission critical facility is crucial and therefore should be taken care of with diligence and expertise. There are certain things you should consider while hiring a data center consultant:
- Certified Professionals – Choose a consultancy firm with experienced and certified professionals. Professionals with a certification like CDCP and CDCS ensure quality services, contingencies handling and crisis management. A company which is home to professionals with the latest data center certification and years of experience in designing and building data centers will definitely deliver much better results with innovative thinking, immense knowledge, and sound advice.
- Consultations on both white and grey space – Select a company which provides consultancy for both white space and grey space of the data center. White space in a data center is where all the IT equipment like the server, storage racks, air cooling units, power distribution system etc. are placed. Grey space is where back end infrastructure is placed like UPS, transformers, generators etc. Certain consultancy firms only deal with white space, but both of them should go hand in hand for the completed data center to perform to best of its ability.
- Budgeted and timely implementation – Any delay in data center implementation puts pressure on the resources and manpower of the company, which in turn increases the total cost ownership for the product. An experienced team with focused reviews and through attention to detail will help you to complete the project on time and stay on track with the spending.
- Offers flexibility – Opt for a consultancy service which understands that your data center requirements will change over time. And for the data center to be fully functional throughout its lifespan, flexibility and modularity are the important requirements in the new-age data centers.
- Advice, maintain, and build – Some consultancy services cover only advising and maintenance, you should go for a service that sees you through all the decisions from the inception of your idea of owning a data center. Your consultant should not walk away the second your data center is ready for IT, it needs to provide clear and detailed as-built documentation for future maintenance and planning. If your consultant also implements your data center for you, it will build one point of contact and eliminates any conflicts.
- Power and cooling consideration – One of the most important aspects of a well-run data center is its cooling system and power consumption. Data center consultants need to help you choose an effective method of cooling, which also keeps the PUE and thus the electricity bill of the data center low.
- Extend to DCIM – Choose a consultant that offers an option of extension to DCIM services. Data center facilities are pretty complicated and the need for DCIM services might be felt sometime in the future, as DCIM facilitates the smooth functioning of a data center while also increasing the life span of the data center itself. It is always good to have an option for contingencies.
Data center consultancy includes planning of design and engineering, project management, construction, monitoring and control, and energy management solutions. Prasa offers enterprise-wide consulting services with a comprehensive approach safeguarding your organization’s mission critical equipment.
Prasa’s consultancy services cover the entire lifecycle starting from assessment, strategy, and design, to implementation of data centers and operational services. Prasa understands that your data center operations need to be available for your staff, customers and vendors- at all times, we cater to these continuous performance demands with optimal uptime and mitigated downtime.
We help you with-
- Site selection
- Electrical design and engineering
- Networking
- Architecture
- Plumbing and fire protection systems design
- Structural engineering
- Security systems design
- Operations and maintenance
- Mechanical design and engineering
- Data center infrastructure management
- Data center monitoring services
To get an opinion/assistance for your data center requirements from Prasa’s data center experts, click here.
