Chapter 1. Data Center Design Philosophy

"Form follows function."

” Louis Henri Sullivan

The detailed process of data center design appears on the outset to be a purely mechanical process involving the layout of the area, computations to determine equipment capacities , and innumerable other engineering details. They are, of course, essential to the design and creation of a data center, however, the mechanics alone do not a data center make. The use of pure mechanics rarely creates anything that is useful, except perhaps by chance.

There are, in fact, some philosophical guidelines that should be kept in mind during the data center design process. These are based on the relatively short history of designing and building practical data centers, but are also based on design concepts going way back. This chapter looks at some of these philosophies.

This chapter contains the following sections:

• "Look Forward by Looking Back "

• "A Modern Pantheon"

• "Fundamentals of the Philosophy "

• "Top Ten Data Center Design Guidelines "