Throw in load balancing, off-site fail over mirror sites, incage and
separate offsite backup storage...
Geeez, I just bought a 2TB drive the other day for $79 ! We had EMC
come in to do an install for FortuneCity and it was a 1.5TB storage
system, it was 4 cabinets - one was the controller cabinet (which was
cool, it had a built in laptop that folded out from the door and three
storage cabs, they were all 72" tall cabinets filled to the brim with
drives and then next to it all was a dedicated Sun E450 pedestal unit
for managing the whole thing. 220v 3phase 30amp on the controller,
pair of 30amp's on each of the storage cab's... That was in early
2000... man talk about cheap storage today!
While guidelines are not a fixed cookie cutter fits-all today, the site
spec's still needed to meet the manufacture requirements, the controller
was 980lbs, the storage cabs were 1,200lbs each so we had to make sure
facilities gave the go ahead on the weight load. Power consumption was
calc'd and then the manufacture heat dissapation had to be met, the line
of cabs were actually set away from the server racks (about a good 6-7'
as I recall) and then they were 3' from the cage fencing wall so that if
the datacenter build out ever changed (it was an open walkway at the
time) and a cage was added adjacent, the circulation was be unobstructed.
The datacenter was always at 62 degree's, after working 4-5 hours in
there, your knuckles started to stiffen up and you'd feel the cold from
the floor come up into your shins... ah.... good times, good times
:-) I loved the quietness, all you heard was the sounds of fans
whirling away, it was a deafening kind of quiet background noise, I miss
that.
Curt
William Donzelli wrote:
And security,
access control, network connectivity and layout, cooling
types, hot/cold aisles, UPS provision, building and energy
monitoring/management systems, server monitoring, KVMs/console servers,
space allocation. Yes, quite a lot is common sense but there's a lot to
consider and plan, and some of it needs expert input if only for reasons of
compliance. (I know, we built two new ones in the last two years).
And planning ahead for maintenance, upgrades, decommissionings*, etc..
See, it is not so simple.
--
Will, *who once had to Sawzall an big RS/6000 to get it out without
breaking a FDDI ring.