The article on page 5 of this issue gets into some, but not a whole lot, of detail on what is happening with the "B" revision to the TIA's 942 data center standard. With our need to squeeze the article down to one page, we left some additional information on the proverbial cutting room floor. Here's some of it.
When the TIA put out its call for interest for the revision effort, TR-42.1 committee chair Henry Fran commented, "The ever-evolving Internet of Things, technologies and topologies, combined with a wider focus on thermal management, energy efficiency, speed and power, will be accommodated in the upcoming revision ... which will be updated in conjunction with the changing landscape. There is an incredible fast pace of technology change and growth that positively impacts our way of life, personally, professionally, and socially. The key is data. The standard will continually mature as a mechanism and process to quickly and efficiently deliver that data."
The article also mentions, and I will emphasize here, that the content of the TIA-942-B standard will reflect the fact that facilities in many parts of the world have adopted this data center standard as a design and administration tool. Yet some terminology that existed in the original TIA-942 standard and/or in the first revision, TIA-942-A, is pretty specific to United States codes, measurements, and systems. From the TR-42.1 committee, it sounds like there is a decent chance that TIA-942-B will include language that is more globally focused than U.S.-centric.
Much of that fine tuning will come about through the process of comment resolution; as the article mentions, the committee ballot on the initial draft of TIA-942-B yielded more than 100 pages of comments. In my mind, the fact the ballot produced such a large volume of commentary indicates how much of an impact the standard has had in its first two iterations. The story I heard was that when the original standard was put forth within TIA in the mid-2000s, it was by and large the work of a small group of people.
Today, by contrast, you can choose your cliche about the development of the "B" revision. Is it "many hands make light work" or "too many cooks spoil the broth"? Perhaps neither applies. It doesn't look like light work, and I expect the broth to be just what's needed for data center administrators around the world.
Patrick McLaughlin
Chief Editor
[email protected]