Businesses are in a constant state of flux, they grow and contract dependant on their needs. This can be in many forms, whether it be in staff, overheads or indeed technology. The days where everything was stored in huge filing cabinets and office clerks were needed to sift through carefully organised folders in order to find a document are now over (and have been for a while now!). Information technology has taken over businesses and this IT comes with its own special requirements. Every piece of information, from shared documents to the hosting of a website on the internet requires storage space and for the most part this storage space is in the form of servers. So what exactly does this entail?

Well, servers are necessary for the storage and transfer of information both intra company, intercompany and customer. There is a clear separation in how companies deal with their server requirements – either utilising third parties to deal with this requirement or managing their own server rooms. If said business is managing their own server rooms they obviously have closer control of their technology (this is not to say that third party servers are bad). So what happens when a business grows to the point where having servers haphazardly stored under a desk somewhere is simply not sufficient? Well the short answer is that they have to dedicate a room to house these servers, and this comes with its own complexities. So it’s better to buy hosting or private server room online, click here if you are looking for something like that.

This is obviously dependant on the amount of servers that a company has, or is intending on having. However, if a company is intending on having a dedicated server rooms there are a number of basic factors to take into account.

A major issue is that of power supply. The design of most office rooms might be sufficient for running the computers necessary for the employees to work on but it is unlikely that the power supply will have taken into account the running of multiple server stacks and ventilation systems. As such, this is one of the first factors that needs to be addressed when considering how to build a dedicated server room.

Safety is another major issue with server rooms, not only in a security sense in order to protect the data that is housed in the room but also in a general sense. Server stacks present a considerable fire hazard due to the heat that is given off by every single server in the stack. Therefore, it is not safe to just stack servers one on top of each other and see how many you can fit in a room! Stacks can be purchased that house the servers and have made provision for ventilation between each server. Cooling systems will need to be installed and this links back to the power supply – cooling systems require power and so this needs to be taken into account.

Server rooms and the larger data centres are more complex than one might originally think. As such, if as an IT manager or part of the team that is in charge of setting up a dedicated server room, you are in any doubt as to the requirements it is often best to get a third party to manage you server room build. Their expertise will ensure that not only does the server room meet certain safety standards but they will also be able to make it as efficient as possible and allow for the potential expansion or contraction of the company.

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