Understanding Data

Center Commissioning
 Imagine this scenario: You’re a passenger on the inaugural flight of the latest luxury jet liner. Everyone is
excited, you’re sitting in your comfortably appointed seat, the flight attendants are serving you champagne
and fancy finger food and then both engines
shut off. As the plane begins its transition
into the world’s largest lawn dart, you
overhear the captain saying, “Maybe we
Operating a data center
should have had a test flight or two before
that hasn’t been fully
we started”. I think we can all agree that this
is a scenario that we would choose to avoid. commissioned is like
While maybe not quite as draconian, this flying in a plane that has
scenario is not dissimilar to running your never been tested
company’s most important applications
in a data center that hasn’t been fully
commissioned.

Why is Commissioning So Important?

The best way to think of commissioning is as a way to reduce the risk of unplanned outages and downtime by
testing what happens in both likely and worst case scenarios. Since there a multiple factors that lead to a data
center outage, commissioning the facility helps to ensure that all of its systems perform as necessary to keep
your applications running—even when running at higher load levels. Because most data centers will still work
with failure conditions at low load levels, only the Integrated System Test (IST) at the 75% and 100% levels
will show how the system performs. In simple terms, since electricity is not digital in nature, performance
when overhead is high can be different than when it is low. This is why an arc flash can occur in one case, but
not in others, or why the grid works until too much load causes cascading failures and blackouts.

Obviously, the costs of unplanned downtime can be catastrophic to your business; hence finding out that
important systems (not unlike airplane engines) fail to operate when you need them becomes paramount.
Commissioning is the most effective way to avoid unplanned outages resulting from design, engineering,
construction, installation and component quality.

What is Commissioning?
Commissioning is a process that documents, tests and validates, the results of a data center’s design and
build process. The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE)
defines it as “a quality-oriented process for achieving, verifying, and documenting that the performance of
facilities, systems, and assemblies meets defined objectives and criteria”. Perhaps the most important aspect

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 of data center commissioning that is left unsaid in these explanations is that only a fully IST commissioned
(described shortly) data center can ensure that all of the sub-systems successfully work together at load.
Among the systems that are tested and verified in the commissioning process are:

• Power

• Cooling

• Fire Suppression

• Security

A full data center commissioning process consists of five separate levels, with each building upon its
predecessor:

Level One
The first level of the commissioning process actually begins during the design phase for the facility itself.
During this phase the plans for the facility and its component systems are evaluated to determine their
suitability for the site’s intended operations.

Level Two
The second level of commissioning is also known as the “Factory Witness Testing” phase. As the name
would imply all key equipment from generators to UPS are powered up at the factory to ensure that they are
performing to their necessary parameters.

Level Three
At this level of the commissioning all major system components are accepted and inspected at the data
center site. The equipment start-up test scripts that have been developed with the component providers and
are reviewed with the installing sub-contractors. These scripts define the requirements that each component
much achieve in their start-up phase to be deemed suitable for their use in the facility.

Level Four
Verifying that all individual components and systems are operational is the primary focus in Level 4 testing.
All equipment is powered up and tested to ensure that it is fully functional within the individual parameters
established for the specific sub-system. This phase is analogous to ensuring that all the lights and power
outlets work in your new house.

Level 4 is where most “phased modular builds” stop. They “factory” test at level 4. But this cannot be the end
of the testing process. That module, like the engine in our airplane example, still has interdependencies. For
example, a parallel generator system that is not tested with every engine connected and at full load is, quite
simply, not sufficiently tested for data center use.

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 Sample Checklist

INFRASTRUCTURE
FIRE/SECURITY
POWER TESTS COOLING TESTS MONITORING
TESTS SYSTEMS TESTS
Power monitoring
System grounding Chillers Pipes
system
CRAC monitoring
Generator Pumps Sprinkler system
system

UPS Cooling tower Gauges Humidity sensors

ATS Pumps

Integrated power
Values/Piping Automatic alarms Temperature sensors
system

EPO Heat exchanger Smoke detection

Ducting/airflow

Integrated cooling
Door lock system
system

Security camera

Level 5
Also known as the “integration phase”, Level 5 commissioning is the most important component of the
commissioning process. In this phase, every aspect of the data center is tested while it is running at its
maximum capacity. In other words, every component and system of the facility must prove its ability to
perform when the data center is operating in its most stressful environment. During Level 5 commissioning
all failure modes are tested and resiliency is validated, including scenarios such as:

• How do the back-up systems perform in the event of a dropped utility line at full load?

• How do the redundant units respond when an air handler at full load fails?

• Does the facility’s power architecture switch over upon the failure of a UPS at full load?

• When maintenance is being performed on one unit can the others handle the load?

• How long is a run through on N-1 of cooling at full load?

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 If integration testing is not performed, then how the site will respond to
an outage is unknown until it happens in a live environment, or simply,
when it is too late. This is why a “factory commissioned” or “phased
build” commissioned data center is fool’s gold. Just like a sprinter’s risk
of a pulled muscle, the possibility for outages increases with the degree
of load (effort in the case of our sprinter), and testing at anything less
then full load is incapable of ensuring the interoperability of the system
in its most stressful mode.

Why Do Some Providers Neglect Level 5

There are five (5)
levels of data center
commissioning. A
data center that hasn’t
successfully completed
each has not been fully
commissioned.
Commissioning?
For many data center providers not performing Level 5 commissioning
is not so much a conscious decision, but rather a fundamental design
limitation of their facility that prohibits them from doing so. Since the
testing protocol that defines Level 5 commissioning necessitates that it
cannot be performed in a “live” environment (one with live servers), the
method and architecture used by a provider to build-out a facility serves
as the determining factor in their ability to conduct this final critical
phase of testing.

The vast majority of today’s data center provider’s use what can best be
described as a “phased” design and build-out methodology across a shared system in the development of
their facilities. In this structure the entire facility is supported by one or more common backplane components
including its power and/or cooling elements. As a result, all components that are selected to support the
facility must be sized to support the entire floor space regardless of the number of customers it houses. Since
a provider’s customers are typically gathered incrementally rather than all at once, this means that the entire
space cannot ever be tested at its maximum load without interrupting customer operations. For example, a
provider deploying eight (8) diesel relay UPS’ in an N+1 configuration cannot install three (3) units in the first
phase and still conduct true Level 5 commissioning as all of the remaining units (numbers 4-8) have yet to be
deployed. The only other option would be to install those 4-8 units, run the commissioning and then remove
them until they are needed. Pretty illogical, eh?

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 Data centers that use a single
backplane architecture cannot perform
Level 5 commissioning as they add
new capacity without shutting down
all attached data halls.

Or as another example, double the IT load at a later date in the same data room. There is no way to test IST
with live servers. Thus, customers operate in an environment in which the ability of the facility’s systems to
perform in the event of component failure is unknown until it actually happens.

Summary
The importance of the applications housed within corporate data centers only continues to grow. This
escalating level of mission criticality has only amplified the need for data center providers to ensure that their
facilities can deliver the level of operational reliability that their customers demand. Despite the fact that
all providers perform some level of commissioning, only by completing the integration phase (Level 5) can
they ensure that all of their site’s systems will perform as required under the maximum load. Unfortunately,
the current trend with modular providers or “phased” data centers precludes the ability to perform Level 5
commissioning. Otherwise, when that next module or phase goes live, a failure scenario makes the same
request as Dirty Harry: “Go ahead, make my day”. Customers that fail to insist on a Level 5 commissioned
data center are recklessly adding an unacceptable level of risk to their operations.

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contemplating taking on the complex task of building their own data centers or having to settle for multi-tenant colocation. Compass builds dedicated facilities
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rack) and low density support and features our Workflow Optimized™ design to enhance the efficiency of your regular operations. Your data center can also be
6 located anywhere you need it and is delivered in less than six (6) months from initial ground breaking on a pad ready site.
© Compass Datacenters 2015