2003 American Power Conversion. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used, reproduced, photocopied, transmitted, or
stored in any retrieval system of any nature, without the written permission of the copyright owner. www.apc.com Rev 2003-1
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Conclusions
A systematic analysis of customer problems relating to rack systems provides a clear statement of direction
for next generation data centers and network rooms. The most pressing problems that are not solved by
current design practices and equipment have the common theme of the inability of the data center or
network room to adapt to change. Next generation rack systems must be more adaptable to changing
requirements, in order to improve both availability and cost effectiveness.
In many industries, a maturity level is reached where new advances in reliability, cycle time, and cost
require standardization, pre-engineering, and modularization. Designers of data centers and network
rooms, designers of the rack systems used in them, owners should consider whether this point has been
reached. IDC predicts that by 2005, 62% of all worldwide server unit shipments will be in a rack-optimized
form factor. This puts further pressure on the notion that the rack should be considered and designed as
part of the data center and network room infrastructure as the results of the survey in this paper suggest.
References
1. Lyman, J., Supporting Server Clusters, News Factor Network, November 1, 2002.
www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/19843.html
