Used raised floor for DataCenter

[tareef]

Hello all,

My name is Tareef. I am in the middle of building a small datacenter and am wondering if anyone know of any good resources for used raised floor panels for equipment rooms?

Thanks,
Tareef

[coolee]

Hi! We are also looking for flooring, specifically we need more vented tiles. If you find a good source for this type of thing please let me know. Likewise if I find one I'll let you know.

[arrow]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=302&item=3461396122

Very good company

Ask for Dwight Kauf

[sailor]

I know a company that has a lot of it - they reclaimed the brand new abovnet facility in atlanta - viurtually unused tile. already palleted and ready to ship. I can get you a great price on it. how much do you need? you can contact me at jhinkle@gnax.net if youa re interested.

[coolee]

Thanks! I'll get my guys on it asap.

[sagonet00]

Hi,
We have a lot of flooring tec-cor II check it out at
http://equipment.sagonet.com/

Plus a lot of other Computer/Data Equipment

[Chicken]

Normally we prefer offers be made *ahem* via PM/email, even though we don't have many posts asking for used raised flooring. Just keep this in mind for next time, it can stay... for now.

[acmachiii]

Im interested in about 2500 sq of raised flooring to start, and possibly upto 7000sq in the near future.. Anyone here who has this quantity, please contact me.

[Ross]

I'll be interested in raised flooring when I finally buy my first house. I don't think my girlfriend will like it but she better get used to it because we will have one kick butt home network!!! :)

[Harry_Trotter]

Originally posted by Ross:

I'll be interested in raised flooring when I finally buy my first house. I don't think my girlfriend will like it but she better get used to it because we will have one kick butt home network!!! :)

Interesting. I never heard of anyone using raised flooring for personal home networking. If I could afford it I probably would too, heh.

I'm wondering what makes you think you're networking is going to be any better because of the raised flooring?

[Chris Armstrong]

What exactly is raised flooring? I think the name would imply there's space beneath the tile for cabling and the like?

[tranz]

Why use raised flooring?

In the DC that we are located in all of the cabling, power, grounds and fiber all run in ladder racking overhead.

Each ladder run is seperated from the next one via 12" All fibre is run inside of a yellow enclosed fibre conduit.

Raised flooring isnt the next best thing since sliced bread. Depends on the building your in I guess. Where we are at the ceiling is 30' up.

[Harry_Trotter]

Originally posted by tranz:

Why use raised flooring?

In the DC that we are located in all of the cabling, power, grounds and fiber all run in ladder racking overhead.

Each ladder run is seperated from the next one via 12" All fibre is run inside of a yellow enclosed fibre conduit.

Raised flooring isnt the next best thing since sliced bread. Depends on the building your in I guess. Where we are at the ceiling is 30' up.

The thing I find most common with data centers that use ladder rack/overhead cabling is most times they are office buildings or rooms that were not designed to be data centers.

There are a lot of data centers that were built from the ground up that were designed with the intentions of using ladder racks. But most of the times it's some kind of warehouse, or office space, that has solid concrete flooring.

You could have raised flooring installed, but if you don't have the money for it ladder racks is the way to go.

I particularly don't care for overhead cabling. It's more "overhead" in the sense of physical work than what it should be.

Additionally, the thermodynamics of these office buildings converted into data centers are never right. A lot of them have AC units either pushing cool air straight down rather than following the natural dynamic of allowing heat to rise.

Raised flooring tends to work best with this dynamic. AC units typically draw in warm air from the top of the room, recycles it, and cools it down in which it sends it back into the room from under the flooring.

It's a lot of money, but if done properly is well worth the cost. There are other tons of advantages that raised flooring has over overhead cabling. But I'm biased. :p:

Though that is one of my pet peeves. Visiting a "data center" and seeing how poorly designed it is. Usually, the first thing I do is roll my eyes whenever I see overhead cabling. But if it's done properly then it could work as well and possibly better than raised flooring.

[tranz]

The facility we are in used to be owned by Colo.com and they spent $15MM outfiting it.

With the roof being so high the heat never gets anywhere near the top of the cabinets. In a 25,000 sq. ft. DC with ac units every 10 feet on the outer walls, the do the exact same thing, pull the heated air that has already cooled to a point from the top of the ceiling area making them more effecient as the air is already on its way back down after loose a degree or two. Cool it and push it back out.

It is true the facility used to be a Costco shopping location, totaling 125,000 sq. ft.

Floor is solid 4 ft thick reinforced concrete. Had to hold tons of soda on pallets, lol

on well, I have used both in my day and perfer the overhead ladder racking.

[Harry_Trotter]

Originally posted by tranz:

The facility we are in used to be owned by Colo.com and they spent $15MM outfiting it.

With the roof being so high the heat never gets anywhere near the top of the cabinets. In a 25,000 sq. ft. DC with ac units every 10 feet on the outer walls, the do the exact same thing, pull the heated air that has already cooled to a point from the top of the ceiling area making them more effecient as the air is already on its way back down after loose a degree or two. Cool it and push it back out.

It is true the facility used to be a Costco shopping location, totaling 125,000 sq. ft.

Floor is solid 4 ft thick reinforced concrete. Had to hold tons of soda on pallets, lol

on well, I have used both in my day and perfer the overhead ladder racking.

I've used both as well and I don't like having to lug a ladder around with me to make cable runs. :p:

I think both have their cabling merits and draw backs. But I've seen some ladder rack layouts that would put any labrynth to shame.

That and just the shear physical labour involved if you have to pull bundles of cable. It's easier to pull a bundle of 100 cables through raised flooring than it is through overhead cabling.

For overhead you would need at least two technicians to make runs like that. Raised flooring one man can do the whole thing.

So far as data centers are concerned, I've only seen a handful of data centers that were actually built from the foundation up to be a data center.

I have only seen a few where the intended design start with concrete flooring. Equinix has a very impressive data center in Ashburn, Virginia where the intended design was to use concrete flooring and overhead cabling.

They advertise that it makes the data center more secure because no one can crawl around and sneak under the floor. ;)

That is true. I know other data centers that has metal bars running through the raised floor to the foundation to prevent people from being able to sneak in from under the raised flooring.

For the most part, if a data center is planned properly that's not neccessarily ever going to be a concern.

The best raised flooring data center I've seen is in the Amazon.com data center in Chantilly. I'm a bit biased here since I use to work there. But it's the most impressive in the complete architecture. No corners were cut.

It's a truly masive facility with a very impressive redundant power plant, HVAC system and networking.

I can't give out too much info on it because I'm still bound by the NDA.

But they use raised flooring in there and after my experience with raised flooring versus prior experience with overhead cabling I'm forever biased to raised flooring. IF it's done properly.

[Ross]

Originally posted by Harry_Trotter:

Interesting. I never heard of anyone using raised flooring for personal home networking. If I could afford it I probably would too, heh.

I'm wondering what makes you think you're networking is going to be any better because of the raised flooring?

Because I'll stop accidently kicking my CAT5 cords and disconnecting my servers. So it will improve my network uptime for sure :)

[Harry_Trotter]

Originally posted by Ross:

Because I'll stop accidently kicking my CAT5 cords and disconnecting my servers. So it will improve my network uptime for sure :)

Haha, I didn't think about that. But maybe you could try zip tying all your cables. I do that and never run into a problem with kicking cords out.

I think that would be a lot cheaper than getting raised flooring. ;)

[no1v2]

...and velcro and baggy ties. You guys need some cabling lessons! :D

Basic overhead ladder racking (not Equinix-style) should be cheaper than installing raised flooring, if you really want something out of a datacenter...

[Harry_Trotter]

Originally posted by no1v2:

...and velcro and baggy ties. You guys need some cabling lessons! :D

Basic overhead ladder racking (not Equinix-style) should be cheaper than installing raised flooring, if you really want something out of a datacenter...

Baggy ties don't do it for me. They just look so out of place. Plus it's a pain to keep twisting them on and off.

I do occassionally go with the velcro. It makes more sense to use on certain types of cables like fiber.

[sagonet00]

Depends also on you cooling system to with Raised Flooring, and we have sold 50,000sq/ft in two weeks, with other orders pending, so either way we are moving it, Tec Cor II Woodcore Flooring is one of the main systems used in profeesional not ametuer Data Centers, again what do I know, I just have been designing and planning them for 15 years.

[Harry_Trotter]

Originally posted by sagonet00:

Depends also on you cooling system to with Raised Flooring, and we have sold 50,000sq/ft in two weeks, with other orders pending, so either way we are moving it, Tec Cor II Woodcore Flooring is one of the main systems used in profeesional not ametuer Data Centers, again what do I know, I just have been designing and planning them for 15 years.

It's hard to find raised floor designs that are done professionally and well.

A lot of the ones I've seen just don't work well with the air flow dynamics of the HVAC. You'd have sections of the floor with differential in temperature and pressure.

I've seen architectures that were designed by experts and professionals and they have been the worst raised floor designs I've seen.

At the same time I've seen a handful of really good ones.

Raised flooring is the way to go if it's done properly.