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How Do You Evaluate a Data Center?
mpapet writes to ask about the ins and outs of datacenter evaluation. Beyond the simpler questions of physical access control, connectivity, and power redundancy/capacity and SLA review, what other questions are important to ask when evaluating a data center? What data centers have people been happy with? What horror stories have people lived through with those that didn't make the cut?
A smattering of basic physics helps.
Long ago in a distribution centre a far far away - well, east SF bay, anyway - we had a custom mini doing a bit of work for a major retail store chain's logistics business. In the warehouse they built a little room for the mini upstairs, everything cheap but per spec, they insisted. They used one of their domestic air conditioners for the cooling, as it had the right thermal rating to match the heat dissipation we required for our gear. Cool, we said - no problem, cheap is ok as long as it's specced correctly.
It wasn't long before we had a service call for a hardware failure. Sent the engineer out, and it was about 110 in the computer room. They'd installed the air intake and air outflow of the air conditioner in the same tiny room.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
I think "data center carpet" should be a new slashdot meme. I can not stop laughing at how ridiculous that "data center" must have looked with that carpet. Please tell me that it was the baby poo green shag carpet from the 70's. That would really make it feature complete.