Certified Data Centre Specialist (CDCS) Course

Course Code: CDCS

Duration: 3 days

‍

Audience

The primary audience for this course includes data centre specialists, facilities managers and IT professionals who work in and around data centres and are responsible for ensuring and enhancing their availability and manageability around the data centre and having the responsibility to achieve and improve high-availability and manageability of the data centre.

‍

Prerequisites

Participants must hold a valid CDCP^® certificate at the time of passing the CDCS^® exam.

‍

Course Objectives

After completion of the course the participant will be able to:

• Understand the data centre design life cycle, including the distinct stages involved.
• Discuss the data centre requirements at a great level of detail with vendors, suppliers and contractors to ensure that these requirements are met.
• Validate design documentation, cost quotations, and technical proposals provided by vendors and contractors to confirm compliance with requirements.
• Understand redundancy levels for both the data centre design/setup and maintenance.
• Understand the various building considerations such as bullet proofing, seismic activity mitigation, fire ratings and thermal stability.
• Understand the correct installation practices for raised flooring systems and to prevent issues such as misalignment, level discrepancies, and leakage.
• Understand how to read a Single Line Electrical Diagram to effectively identify and mitigate common design flaws.
• Choose the correct UPS and parallel configuration, while gaining the knowledge required to recognise and avoid typical errors associated with parallel installations.
• Understand how to calculate battery banks and assess vendor-proposed configurations to verify compliance with design and performance requirements.
• Understand the appropriate separation distances needed to mitigate electromagnetic field (EMF) risks to human health and avoid interference with sensitive equipment.
• Understand the fundamental cooling system design, encompassing effeciency metrics, installation prerequisites, airflow rates (CFM), temperature differentials (Delta-T), and other essential performance parameters.
• Understand how to evaluate and select advanced liquid cooling solutions that are specifically designed to meet the thermal and operational demands of AI and high-performance computing (HPC) environments.
• Understand contamination factors and limitations.
• Understand fire suppression systems, including the various available options, methods for calculating gas volume requirements, and procedures for verifying correct system installation.
• Understand how to assess data centre energy efficiency using industry-standard metrics, and explore methods to enhance overall energy performance.

‍

Course Content

Data Centre Design/Life Cycle Overview

• Phases of the data centre life cycle

Standards and Rating Level Definitions

• Rating levels history and definitions
• Standards and guideline comparison
• N-redundancy options
• Distributed redundant options
• Concurrent maintainability
• Fault tolerant
• Substation requirements
• Example topologies
• Maintenance options

Building Considerations

• Building location and floor loading considerations
• Floor and hanging loads requirements
• Firing rating for walls and glass
• Blast protection and bullet proofing
• Forced entry protection

Advanced Raised Floor & Suspended Ceiling

• Raised Floor installation requirements
• Common raised floor problems
• Seismic protection
• Requirements for suspended ceiling

Advanced Power

• Electrical formulae
• Single Line Diagram (SLD)
• Overcurrent protection devices
• Earth Leakage protection
• Sizing of protective components
• Surge protection
• Power cabling and PDU requirements
• Types of generators
• Generator components
• Fuel storage and calculation
• Generator parallelling
• Required UPS specifications
• UPS parallel configuration
• Harmonic filters
• Battery bank terminology
• Calculating battery banks
• Battery charging
• Parallelling battery banks
• Battery testing
• Battery case selection
• Flywheel
• Hydrogen fuel cells

Advanced Electro Magnetic Fields

• Sources of EMF
• Single and three phase radiation
• Measuring EMF
• Safe distance guidance
• Calculation of EMF attenuation factors

Advanced Cooling

• Cooling definitions
• Psychrometric chart
• ASHRAE recommendations
• Heat dissipation
• Equipment airflow
• Floor plan set-up
• Types of perforated tiles
• Rack door construction
• Delta-T and impact
• Optimizing airflow
• Thermal unit conversions
• Calculating air volume displacement (CFM/CMH)
• Cooling capacity calculations
• Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
• Air-conditioner efficiency
• SHR impact on OPEX
• Efficiency indicators
• Air-conditioner selection
• Humidity control
• Redundancy requirements
• Installation requirements
• Service corridor considerations
• Set points and calibration
• Advanced cooling technologies – air cooling
• Advanced cooling technologies – liquid cooling

Advanced Fire Protection

• Fire triangle
• Fire detection systems
• Installation and testing of smoke sensors
• Water-based suppression systems
• Gas-based suppression systems
• Calculate gas content
• Release and hold times
• Fire detection panel requirements
• Verification of installation
• Ongoing maintenance
• Alternative systems

Designing and Installing Scalable Network Cabling Systems

• TIA-942 cabling structure topology
• Copper and fibre cabling
• ToR and EoR design
• Installation best practices
• Grounding and bonding
• Cables labelling and administration

Environmental Specifications / Contamination Control

• Acoustic noise effects, regulations, specifications and limits
• Data centre contamination categories
• Contamination measurements, standards and limits
• Preventive measures

Data Centre Efficiency

• Business drivers for environmental sustainability
• Green standards and guidelines
• Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE)
• PUE categories
• Additional performance metrics
• Open Compute Project (OCP)
• Savings on cooling infrastructure
• Savings on light infrastructure

‍