Reichle & De-Massari (R&M) recently collaborated with Rittal to produce a white paper titled “10 Steps Towards an Optimal IT Infrastructure.” When announcing the document’s availability, R&M said it “guides data center planners and operators, as well as administrators, through the complete physical infrastructure of a data center, and provides information on how to select the optimal system components. Rittal covers the IT infrastructure from the rack through power distribution to monitoring, while R&M deals with structured cabling, polarity management, and network monitoring.”
The white paper’s introduction explains, “An essential task of a data center administrator is the planning of the IT infrastructure depending on the actual and future requirements of the end customer. The question of level of availability and the redundancy concept to be implemented is crucial for the architecture of the data center … A second important aspect is the dimensioning and use of the IT racks. A server rack features different requirements compared to a network enclosure. In that context, the planned and future installation of active components has to be taken into account.
“In addition, the intended use of IT racks for the required cabling has to be defined. Consultants and data center operators have to structure the network cabling carefully and in a forward-looking manner. The passive network infrastructure is also part of the Tier categorization, and has to fulfill the typical audit and compliance requirements in accordance with the respective technical regulations.”
The white paper is 24 pages long, providing significant detail on each of the 10 steps. The paper names and describes the 10 steps in the following order.
- Rack
- Power Protection
- Cooling
- Security
- Structured Cabling
- Polarity Management
- Network Monitoring and Taps
- AIM/DCIM
- Lifecycle
- Management Processes and Services