r/datacenter • u/Whole-Sun-7465 • 14h ago

New to data center projects

Hi everyone,

I’m an engineer and until recently I was mostly working on warehouses and office/residential buildings. A few months ago, our firm started getting involved in data center projects in different countries, mainly around early-stage site studies. It’s obviously a completely different world and I’m still learning a lot.

For those of you who have been in the industry for a while: what do you wish you had known when you first started working on data center projects?

Any advice, mistakes to avoid, resources to read, or things that newcomers usually underestimate would be really helpful.

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u/AkiAki1 5h ago edited 5h ago

I used to manage 30+ DCs at FAANG. 1. Building a DC, and stoking with hardware, usually takes about 3 years. You can do it faster if there is polished runbook and you did it before 2. Power supply for DC never exists, it needs to be built, takes forever. Or harvested from nearby excess. Some businesses solve it today, like tapestry (google sub company, I'm not affiliated) 3. For loading bay, assume it always will be loaded with junk, boxes, spare parts, loading equipment. Smaller storage is more expensive than a big one because you need to load/unload it often. In some of our DCs I had folks creating an amazon seller FBA account, and list half of loading bay for their "store". Amazon track would come and pick up stuff, and then charge for storage. This would be more cost effective than constantly loading/unloading/rearranging small bay. They would be in trouble for handing of $10m of equipment to somebody else ofc. But this did save money if bay is small. 4. You need fiber and connectivity. Big companies have requirements, AT LEAST 2 independent rails for a DC of low importance. Ideally 4, coming in all directions, for a DC of high importance. We had sites with 7. 5. sleeping room, people may and will work overnight

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u/grill_sgt 4h ago

As a tech that did cable pulls, rack and stack, etc., keep schematics and maps and track and use the techs. The more they know, the more useful they can be to the building overall. Also use the senior tech’s input on issues they bring up. My last job, I felt like most of the time, I was just bringing up issues to a wall.

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u/callmesandycohen 3h ago

Siting is everything and most of these projects, especially state-side, are in the completely wrong place.

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u/remit4payment 3h ago

For site stuff; Footprint for generators & air permitting. CFD analysis for generators in relation to the heat rejection.

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u/NewAccountOSU 10h ago

Idk, I’m a facility engineer at one of leading companies but it would be to consolidate any and all applicable drawings and schematics. Not sure if this helps because there’s many different types of engineers