Since its inception, ASHRAE Technical Committee 9.9 has published books, articles, and transaction papers in an effort to establish current best practices applicable to data center design and operation. Unfortunately, facilities managers, IT professionals, and design engineers continue to practice their specialties in the same manner that has been practiced for 10 or 20 years. Complicating this issue is that the higher load densities experienced in today’s data centers have made the goal of 100% uptime more challenging to achieve, while at the same time making the consequences of downtime more damaging to the business’s operations. Coupled with the need to keep energy costs down and the drive to practice sustainable design, a complete new set of Best Practices have been developed that address today’s complex issues of data center design.

Units: I-P