DevOps Articles

Pick a data center layout: Raised floors vs. overhead cabling

In data center infrastructure design, admins may wonder if it's more beneficial to place all cabling overhead to save the cost of a raised floor or pay more upfront to reap raised floor benefits. Some teams might decide a hybrid approach is better and combine the advantages of overhead and raised floor designs. With or without raised floors, there's lots of flexibility to data center design.

Pushing huge quantities of air through a raised floor plenum to hundreds of cabinets with widely varying cooling requirements is challenging.

Hybrid designs use raised floor for most piping, with power and cabling overhead; refrigerant piping for spot coolers must be high.