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Writer's pictureRichard S. Einhorn

Upgrading, Retrofitting or Expanding a live Data Center?

Updated: Jan 8, 2021

It’s important to take a holistic and integrated view from design to commissioning to operations



EYP Mission Critical Facilities has a long history working in live datacenters, dating back to the late 90’s and early part of the new millennium. We consistently provided upgrade work for the financial, telecommunications, and insurance industries who were constantly adding new equipment or expanding capacities with every new IT refresh. Likewise, in the decade that followed, we found ourselves modernizing numerous early web hosting and service provider facilities as they converted them to multi-tenant, colocation or hyperscale use.


The next upgrade cycle will include many of the greenfield facilities we and others designed for the enterprise, service provider/colo and cloud/hyperscale sectors

With the rapid pace of cloud adoption, during this time there was also a cascading wave of conversions and consolidations, as enterprises moved more and more IT workload to these hyperscalers and colocation providers. Coupled with this, was the unrelenting pace of corporate mergers and acquisitions, with their own dynamic of consolidation that inevitably led to optimized, off-loaded or decommissioned data center facilities. In such cases, and in addition to all the services already presented, comes a level of strategic analysis and due diligence unique to these enterprise IT transformations.


A significant number of facilities constructed over the last decade require modernization to drive efficiency and align with technology changes driven by AI, IoT and other digital advancements.

The next upgrade cycle will include many of the greenfield facilities we and others designed for the enterprise, service provider/colo and cloud/hyperscale sectors. Even these facilities of varying designs for search, storage, and hyperscale, in some cases less than a decade old, need significant engineering work to meet customer requirements; be brought to a new standard; or to simply replace end-of-life components.


In summary, these upgrades will become more and more prevalent over the next five years. A significant number of facilities constructed over the last decade require modernization to drive efficiency and align with technology changes driven by AI, IoT and other digital advancements. The key to these successful upgrades is alignment between your internal facilities and operations team, with outside operational experts and MEP design teams. These professionals need to be experienced at working in active facilities to ensure you are factoring in, and mitigating in advance, any potential problems that might occur during an upgrade scenario. Renovating an operational data center is analogous to performing open heart surgery, so experience and intimate knowledge of the infrastructure control is crucial to success without unscheduled downtime.

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