Saturday 2 May 2020

ANSI/BICSI 002-2019 Data Center Design and Implementation Best Practices

Purely by chance I saw a reference on-line to the BICSI document on best practices for Data Centre Design and implementation.  I had a quick look on their website and was intrigued by the document. So I took a deep breath, opened my card wallet, and purchased an electronic version of their document. At $525  (USD) it is no lightweight purchase, but I think a fair investment if you are in that line of business.    Mistakes made in the early design processes of a Data Centre can be very very expensive to fix at a later stage in the project. At the very least this document gives a good checklist of things to consider. It also usefully refers to other appropriate standards.

My line of business is more in the area of Trading Floors and their associated technology rooms, but much of the Data Centre best practices are useful to keep in mind.

I'm about 25% through the first read of this document. It is delivered in an encrypted pdf format which you need a code to activate the document. One side effect is you cannot use adobe comments to annotate individual pages. Nor can you print from the document, and while it is understandable from the publisher's viewpoint it is a pain in the butt.

It is obviously written by people exposed to the USA management style of data centers. In the accommodation section most of the technical and security areas are described, but no mention is made of canteen or recreational facilities for the operations and engineering staff. Believe it or not people are an important part of a datacenter and their welfare is important.