How To Calculate Cost And Budget On A Data Center Moving Project

How to Estimate Data Center Expansion Costs So now you want more than. You lot want boosted information eye facilities to put in extra servers, data storage units, racks, cabling, and network connections because your current data center is already maxed out. Data heart expansion sounds similar the way to go if you can get upkeep approval. The question is: what should go into the budget?

Building It and Running It

Fifty-fifty if the initial estimate for constructing an add-on facility raises eyebrows, you lot'll need to gene in operational costs as well. The total cost of ownership or TCO is the overall metric to use. It hardware and software vendors accept been using this concept for decades, so it should be easy enough to grasp in terms of information middle expansion as well.

Specifying the New DC Facility

If yous already have ane data center in operation, will the additional one simply be more than of the same? Not necessarily, for the following reasons:

Data eye engineering science continues to evolve (a DC over 7 years old is considered to be obsolete by industry observers Gartner, Inc.)
Your own business organization needs may take evolved. Possibly you started with Tier 1 facilities, only now y'all demand Tier 4 (or fifty-fifty vice versa).
Your first DC was over or nether-dimensioned. At that place'south no point in repeating earlier mistakes.

Flooring infinite, availability/business continuity, power requirements, and desired location are then major factors that will determine the right choice of a site. Even so, grabbing a site kickoff because it is affordable, available or both, and and so trying to shoehorn new DC facilities into it is the wrong way round.

Numbers for Budgets Don't Come Out of Hats

They are unlikely to come from publicly available web pages, either. Spider web pages can give you a hint of what's in store and quote sample figures for costs per square foot or per megawatt of power. However, even if you stop up in the correct ballpark for your project, this may be no more a coincidence. Budgeting typically needs to exist nix-based (from scratch), starting with business objectives (chapters, security, future needs) that are then accurately translated into DC building characteristics and features.

Extra Bits and Pieces

Data center expansion is already a complex thing for the reasons given higher up. Two further things can upset an otherwise carefully prepared budget:

Items you lot forgot to include, such equally the possible cost of moving systems and data between the current DC and the new facility.
Factors like LEED project and construction criteria to assist make the new facility as ecologically friendly as possible.

Wow, Is It Really Going to Cost That Much?

Some additional data center facilities are very big-ticket items. After previously spending around $120 million on its data center facilities in Singapore, Google then signed off on a $380 million expansion. Budgets can as well be bigger than funds available, whatever the levels nether discussion. If so, other solutions may be preferable. They may include the apply of colocation facilities, where all-in monthly fees tin can be easier to handle besides equally existence more affordable.

Is modular design the solution for easy expansion of data centers? Share your stance with us with a line or two in the space for comments below.

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