FreeAxez raised flooring?

Fri Mar 5 18:53:55 UTC 2010

On Fri, Mar 05, 2010 at 01:41:42PM -0500, William Herrin wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 12:54 PM, Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com> wrote:
> > Not sure about the purpose of a raised floor if it doesn't create a plenum, but, the
> > step forward from raised-floor plenum is hot-aisle/cold-aisle which requires a good
> > bit more discipline in your datacenter, but, is substantially more efficient.
> 
> Hi Owen,
> 
> Hot-aisle/cold-aisle is a separate issue from a raised floor plenum.
> They're mutually supportive but not mutually dependent.
> 
> Raised floor has pros and cons which make it good or bad depending on
> the environment. If you haven't yet started implementing hot
> aisle/cold aisle, on the other hand, you're already the better part of
> a decade out of date and your equipment is suffering for it.
> 
> 
> For the original question: Non-plenum short raised floor can be useful
> if you want to separate your power and data wiring. Other than that, I
> can't see any advantage versus a solid floor and either snake tray or
> other overhead wiring systems.

Yeah, it made it easier to feed power by running whips instead of
conduit and also got the power away from the data lines. The problem
with running any wiring under the floor is it always becomes a place
to hide the bodies. (Ever looked under a floor that's been there for
20 years?) If you also used it as a cold air plenum, bad wiring and so
on also interferes with airflow and people removing tiles or having to
cut tiles to get around this or that affects your static pressure and
throws your AC off. So these days, I personally favor nothing but air
under the floor and strict policies regarding movement of floor tiles.

-Wayne

---
Wayne Bouchard
web at typo.org
Network Dude
http://www.typo.org/~web/