Never built a server room where one of his wall would be an exterior wall of the building. Those walls can be damp a contain water pipes. Avoid windows in common areas for security purpose. You also have to evaluate any potential source of interference (High voltage, motor, ….)
The cooling system in the computer room is a major consideration. Due to the sensitivity of computer equipment’s to heat, humidity and dust. In small computer room, close air conditioning system are installs. These systems control temperature, humidity and can be remotely monitored. For server room, we see different systems. The two most popular ones are:
Up flow air conditioning:
This type draws air into the front and underneath the air handling unit. Cools the air and distribute IT. This configuration is well suited when raise floors are either inadequate or inexistent.
Down flow air conditioning:
Typically install in newer buildings, this system distribute the cold air trough the floor in the cold aisles and recovering it in the hot aisles. In big server room, we recuperate that heat and re-use it in the building.
Another major consideration is the power that room cannot be down. We recommend redundancy power through 2 different sources.
Our recommendation is that a server room should be equipped with water sprinklers. We used to use halon gas but due to the unsafe for environmental & human this gaz is ban. The trend is now to use nitrogen, argon or CO2. In all case the room needs to be well sealed. That why AJS Groupe we use 3M or Hilty devices fire stop systems.
As the electrical the data and the AC needs to have redundancy by redundancy we mean a backup for equipment it means having everything in double for power and Data it have a second source using a different path.
The demand in the server room is constantly changing. Means as the organization evolve and grow, and the technology changes. The choice of racks in a server room is usually the prime factor when determining space. Today with mounting systems you can heaven mount equipment’s sideways on the rack reducing the amount of vertical U used.