Best floor of a tall building to locate your server room or data center [closed]

Solution 1:

Weight isn't necessarily an issue. I'm working in a building with a large datacenter about 1/3 of the way up and across the street from a building with a medium sized datacenter about 11 stories up. I've been in datacenters in pole buildings, bunkers, high-rises, etc. Given a facility and some money, all things are possible.

The issue totally depends on the building though, and you need to talk to the landlord, building manager or building engineer about that. If I was making a decision about this, I'd hire someone with a clue to defer it to. Barring that, here's what I'd be thinking about:

• Elevator access - does the service elevator have sufficient clearance to bring in outsized stuff. Is there a service elevator?
• HVAC - is there sufficient cooling or sufficient ability to bring in more cooling?
• Power - same as above
• Floor load - will that fancy new SAN cause the cantilevered floor to start bouncing up and down?
• Sump pumps - if you're putting your business in the basement, do you need sump pumps? Are they big enough? Do they have backup?
• Access to loading dock - Is the elevator/basement door accessible to the loading dock? You are going to hate life if you need to unpack pallets and reassemble them to get to the elevator
• Length of the lease - If you have 5 years left and intend to move, do you want to invest in all sorts of improvements?

There are no general answers that will lead to you making an intelligent yes or no decision. You need to study the site and make an appropriate decision based upon the building, your budget and other factors. You may even find that it is more cost effective to buy datacenter space from a colo rather than build out the space.

Solution 2:

Point against: Flood risk!

Solution 3:

Basements are the first place that will flood in the event of a leak, fire, etc. Also basements are only cool because they are insulated. If you stick hot equipment in there then it makes it harder to cool than on an above ground floor.

Solution 4:

Half in the basement, half on the top floor.

The basement ones are out of the way, near incoming power systems but can get flooded. The top floor ones won't get flooded and are right on below the air-con systems (in fact you may be able to simply vent the hot air, saving loads of cash) but could be caught up in rising fires.

If you split your systems smartly you can manage the weight load and also provide a 'free' half-way house to a 'second-site'/DR solution whilst only taking up half of the space per floor you normally would.

Plus of course all IT people would need priority lift permissions at all times - which could come in handy :)