What’s in a Raised Floor?

Raised floors, as the name suggests is elevated flooring above the base floor ranging from two inches to two meters. This is constructed to keep the mechanical services, cables, wiring, cooling system etc hidden, easily accessible and safe from accidental damage. They are used in specialized areas like IT labs, computer rooms and data centers. Proper lighting and safety provisions are made under raised floors where a person can crawl or walk through to do the necessary work on concealed cables and services.

Raised floor makes it easy to adapt to changes successfully without any hindrance from the permanent structural limitations. The need for ability to implement technical solutions and upgrades as required by the data center with flexibility to expand or accommodate new additions in the hardware justifies the need of raised floors. The raised floor helps implement new technologies quickly without affecting the existing setup. It is a good investment in ever changing competitive technical world.

The pre-decided height of a raised floor can accommodate the required air flow volumes, cabling for network and for power with ease of installation. Additional cooling equipment can easily be added to the raised floor benefits. The desired networking infrastructure as per the requirement is possible with raised floors. Along with functional benefits of repairs and inspection whenever desired, it also guarantees a safe and long life to both the equipment and the maintenance supplies such as cooling, plumbing, cabling etc. Raised floors are effective and practical as they meet the requirements of a data center. They save on space and cost of cooling as you can control the vents from the raised floors.

Although raised floors are beneficial, there are set of problems too. Raised flooring gives a clean appearance from above, but this becomes false with time as the equipment and circuit design keeps on changing. In a small data center, the under-floor becomes so crowded with cables that the air flow gets obstructed and it effects the cooling. Maintaining and keeping the space clean also becomes a problem as many people need to access it. Due to raised floors moving in and out of any equipment becomes difficult. Having raised floors can be expensive as it requires a clearance from the system which itself increases the costing. So raised floors are not considered as the best solutions for data centers.

Using raised floors is a debatable topic. The most attractive use of raised floor is the ability of upgrading, adding or removing cables easily. Installation of equipments, redundant cables and redevelopment if required with ease makes raised floors popular in the consumer market.

Given below is a list of links of Raised floor Solution provider

1.http://www.cyrusone.com/
2.http://www.huatongfloor.com/
3.http://www.unistrutohio.com/raised-access-floor-systems.html
4.http://www.unistrutohio.com/raised-access-floor-systems.html
5.http://www1.uk.gyron.net/tag/raised-flooring

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