Building a data center from scratch allows some of the greatest customization that a technical team could imagine. Instead of making your equipment work with an existing building, you can plan all of your equipment placement and maintenance needs along with the building and its utilities. As you plan your data center's layout, consider a few electrical conveniences that an electrical construction professional could provide.

Dark Cable Makes Repairs Easier

There are many existing data center layouts that can be adopted to your specific area and needs. One issue that many older data center plans have is a lack of redundancy or an immediate backup plan. If cables are severed, burned, or otherwise damaged, or if new connections need to be wired, basic building may need to break into the walls to add new wiring. It isn't practical for a data center to drag multiple network cables across the floor in order to connect new devices.

Dark cabling solves this problem by pulling extra wiring that won't be connected immediately. There is often more wiring than necessary in dark cabling, which allows technician to extend their network reach and cut off what is necessary on their own. After all, it's better to have too much than not enough.

The dark cable comes from the fact that there is no electricity flowing through the wiring. Optical fiber cables illustrate the meaning the most, as actual light travels across the active cables while the inactive cables are dark.

This can be done with your building's electrical wiring, networking cables, telephone systems, or any wiring that you plan on expanding. To make things more convenient, ask the construction team to include a maintenance tunnel just large enough to fit multiple cables, then include access panels every few feet to make wall destruction for wiring a thing of the past.

Electrical Load and Fuse Boxes in Better Positions

If you're moving a data center into an existing position, the fuse box (also known as circuit box or breaker board) may be too far away from your most sensitive or volatile electrical system. Although it isn't impossible to have a fuse box installed in a different location, new construction allows for more convenient and less complicated wiring.

Instead of dealing with a makeshift fuse box or walking to the other side of the building to shut off power, you can have a series of safety switches involved. The fuse box can be used as normal, but if you need to shut down an entire room due to massive overheating, fires or flooding, a large switch that can be mashed in a panicked emergency can save a lot of live and equipment.

Contact an electrical contractor like Albarell Electric Inc to begin planning for safety and convenience in a new data center design.