When most people think about a
datacenter, they envision rows of servers
mounted in racks, filling up a raised
floor environment. What they often
don’t recognize is the vast amount of
infrastructure that supports the operation
of the servers—from the substation that
provides primary power, to the diesel
back-up generators, through the battery
UPS, air handlers, cooling towers and
chiller plants.
In traditional datacenter build-outs, 70 to
80 percent of the construction costs are
driven by the mechanical and electrical
infrastructure to operate and cool the
servers. Only seven to nine percent of the
cost goes to architectural systems and
the building shell. Consequently, most of
the cost to construct a new datacenter
scales with power, not with space.
Effective datacenter designs optimize for how many
megawatts are in the datacenter, and how
many servers this power can support.
It is imperative to build enough space
to ensure that it is not a constraint to
utilizing all the available power.
I know a lot of the large companies pay millions to build a new data center. You use other types of hosting solutions that essentially allow you to rent space and servers (along with other equipment) in a data center. Some people also buy servers but then pay to have them hosted in an already established data center.