When preparing for a data center consolidation project, there are steps that need to be taken in order to make good judgments about how much can be consolidated and which sites make the most sense for becoming receiving data centers. Just as IT assets, network bandwidth, compute power, and the level of virtualization are determined as part of the consolidation analysis, it is also critical to have an accurate understanding of each site’s physical infrastructure capabilities. This paper specifically addresses facility power, cooling, and the physical space.
Not properly accounting for this can lead to serious problems including gross over- provisioning of resources or, conversely, not having enough power, cooling, or space capacity to meet user needs. The current capacity, utilization, and scalability for future growth need to be understood before deciding which data center(s) will become the receiving host. In many cases, however, this information is unknown. And since there can be wide disparities in the size, architecture, and management and reporting structures amongst the data centers involved in a given project, specifying these capabilities may seem to be a daunting task. This paper describes a simple, cost-effective standardized approach to establishing current conditions and future capabilities of each data center.