Whether your business is moving into a new location for the first time, or you’re moving because you outgrew your previous building, you need a plan. When planning and designing the new location, you’re probably thinking about the workspaces, offices, conference rooms, and break rooms—but don’t forget about your IT team. They’ll need space to create an efficient server room so your business can operate smoothly. Depending on the size of your building and the number of devices you’ll need to connect, you may need a full room designated for servers. On the other hand, you may need a simple closet. Regardless, you should consult with your IT team about their needs, and keep reading to learn how to design a server room.
Know how much space you have to work with
You should know the dimension of the room you plan to use for the servers before moving into the space. By knowing the size of the room, you can plan your design accordingly. Additionally, your space should have room for all your basic equipment, plus enough room for future growth. If you’re not a tech-savvy person, we’d suggest involving your IT team to provide insight during the design process. Consider your server room like a home renovation: You can’t design your kitchen if you don’t know how much space you have. The same concept applies for your server room; once you know the room’s dimensions, you can begin planning the design.
Install an uninterrupted power supply
Your server room should always have sufficient power, even during interruptions. A common way businesses safeguard their server’s power is through an uninterrupted power supply, or UPS system. Even if you already have a UPS, if you’re growing and expanding your server network, you’ll need to ensure that you don’t overload the UPS. The more infrastructure you add, the more power you’re using, and if the UPS can’t keep up, you increase the possibility of servers doing down. Additionally, your UPS system saves your servers during power surges––one of the leading reasons for damaged servers. A power surge may require you to repair or replace your servers, which involves more downtime, which then leads to lost business. In other words, make sure your current UPS system can handle your new setup.
Keep the area open with plenty of ventilation
Servers put off a lot of heat, especially with all the business you’re doing, so design your server room with ventilation in mind. Have plenty of space between servers and cable racks. A common method businesses use to avoid overheating is a hot-aisle/cold-aisle setup. Essentially, this configuration requires that the rows be installed with cold air coming through one way and hot air coming out another way. If the hot and cold air were to go the same direction, not only is that counterproductive, but you may overheat your servers. Just keep cold and hot airways separate, and you should be okay. You could also install fans for your server room as an additional precaution.
Use server racks to your advantage
Chances are, you already use server racks. Server racks are your best friend when it comes to designing the ideal server room because they’ll help you stay organized and keep the servers, wires, and other hardware safe. Many server racks come with temperature control installed; however, that doesn’t mean you can’t add more if you need to. Additionally, server racks make maintenance much easier for IT workers. In addition to the organization, maintenance, and protection benefits, server racks also contain some of the noise that servers make. While the noise isn’t overwhelming in, for instance, industrial workplaces, it can be distracting in an office setting.
Organization is key
If you’re not an IT worker, stepping into a server room can be overwhelming. There are unfamiliar noises, huge server racks, cables, and more. Now just imagine how much worse that room would be if the company didn’t plan beforehand to organize the room accordingly. If you neglect to organize your server room, you could encounter overheated servers, tangled cables, and more—not to mention the occasional bad or unplugged cable. Accidents happen. An IT worker may need to go in a server room to update something and could accidentally unplug a cable somewhere. Good luck finding the problem-child in an unorganized server room. Instead, by taking the time to organize the room early on, you’ll be able to easily locate which cable or server is causing the problem, saving you a ton of time and reducing your network downtime.
If you’re not an IT worker, your server room isn’t something you want or care to think about regularly. However, you need to keep in mind that your servers allow you to do your work. By taking plenty of time to plan early on, you’ll save yourself a lot of frustration in the future. We understand that severs, routers, modems, cables, and so on aren’t very exciting, especially if you’re not tech-savvy. However, you need to understand that a great server setup is vital to your company’s operations running smoothly, which will ultimately contribute to your success. Luckily, you now know how to design a server room, so you won’t have to worry about a mediocre set-up. Instead, your server room will be a reliable, organized, and efficient setup that your IT team will enjoy and your business will benefit from.
Here at CableWholesale, we want to help you take your server room to the next level. You may not be tech-savvy, but we are. So if you need help figuring out which materials would best fit your needs, our customer service team is full of experts that are here for you. One of our primary values is offering high-quality products, and we stand behind them by offering a lifetime warranty on most of our products. We have an extensive inventory for you to shop, with everything from Cat5e Ethernet cables, outdoor Ethernet cables, HDMI Ethernet cables, and even server rack fans. Contact us today for more information—we’d be happy to help.
