TRAINING & SKILLS DEVELOPMENT
By Keith Sawyer, UK & Ireland
District Vice Chair, BICSI
www.bicsi.org
25
The road to becoming a Data Centre
Design Consultant is now clearer
than ever before
Data Centre design has become increasingly complex.
Recent market research predicts that the global data
centre construction market will grow at a CAGR of above
8% between 2017 and 2021 (technavio report: Global
Data Centre Construction Market 2017-2021). This reflects
the virtuous cycle of demand fuelled by technological,
sociological and legislative changes. Whether we look at
security; data centre consolidation & new architectures; IoT
& industrial automation; wearable tech; video on demand;
retail & shopping habits; disruptive business models;
paperless offices; connected homes, offices & cars; 5G &
wireless wave2 – the list is endless.
It all points to ever increasing IP traffic and increasing
data centre capacity for the foreseeable future. Mega
cloud data centres are predicted to absorb the majority
of the increase in traffic, representing 47% of all installed
data centre servers by 2020 (Cisco Global Cloud Index
2015-2020). Approximately 45% of the world’s mega
data centres are currently located in the US and American
companies continue to dominate critical thinking in data
centre design. In this regard BICSI* is no exception and
have been an important voice in the industry in providing
guidance on the way to design data centre infrastructure.
With increasing focus on reliability and efficiency coupled
to rapid technological changes in the data centre, Today's
data centre designer is expected to have knowledge of
mechanical, electrical and telecommunications systems, and
how they interact. As well as possessing this wide-ranging
knowledge, designers are expected to be familiar with the
other needs of a data centre, such as security, ICT, project
management and building requirements. It’s clear that data
centres have become increasingly more complex to design
and bring online.
The Foundation Standard
In December 2015 BICSI announced the updated release of
its flagship International Standard: ANSI/BICSI 002-2014
Data Centre Design and Implementation Best Practices.
Already established as the foundation standard for data
centres around the world, ANSI/BICSI 002-2014 provides
requirements, guidelines and best practices applicable to
any data centre. It features 500 pages of content and has
expanded to cover modular and container data centres, data
centre infrastructure management (DCIM) and building
systems; DC Power; hot & cold aisles; multi-data centre
outsourcing and energy efficiency. An international team of
more than 50 volunteer subject matter experts contributed
from all disciplines within data centres.
Globally recognised credentials
While the widely recognised standard should ideally
"Mega cloud data centres are predicted to
absorb the majority of the increase in traffic,
representing 47% of all installed data centre
servers by 2020"
be in any data centre designer’s reference library, it’s
unreasonable to expect designers to read through 500
pages and understand how best to apply in practice. BICSI
understood this, and in August 2015 announced the launch
of DC102: Applied Data Centre Design and Best Practices.
The five day training course was linked directly to ANSI/
BICSI 002-2014. The DC102 training course was designed
with the expectation of two year’s experience in data
centre design or construction so was not suited, setting the
bar too high, for those aspiring to become a designer but
lacking experience. With this in mind BICSI introduced BICSI
DC101: Introduction to Data Centre Design.
Introduction to Data Centre Design is an online, self-
paced course intended to act as the first step in the data
centre design consultant (DCDC) career path and part of
the BICSI CONNECT family of online courses. Also based
on the ANSI/BICSI002-2014 standard, the course covers
foundational knowledge of data centre design, including an
overview of the data centre design process, design criteria,
systems, components, sustainability, commissioning and
maintenance. DC101 consists of 11 modules containing
interactive exercises, knowledge checks and gaming
activities designed to help retain basic knowledge of data
centre design based practices. Typically, it takes 90 days
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