A proper floor plan is the necessary foundation of an effective density and phasing plan. Most users do not understand how critical the floor layout is to the performance of a data center, or they only understand its importance after a poor layout has compromised the deployment. The layout can greatly affect certain elements of a data center, such as:

• Achievable power density
• Complexity of the power and cooling distribution systems
• Electrical power consumption of the data center

This white paper outlines an effective method for developing a floor layout and why that it is not necessary to identify specific devices in advance as most of the benefit of floor planning is independent of the specific devices deployed.