Why Should Floors Be Raised?

What does every data center (DC) have? If you said “data” or “servers,” well, then you’re technically correct. (Go you!) However, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but neither of those answers is the one we’re looking for. No, you have to look a little bit lower to find the correct response. We’re talking about a floor.

To be fair, every room has a floor, so this may have been somewhat of an unfair question to ask you. Don’t worry, though, because the important part is that we’ve now got your attention and can talk with you a little bit about the two different types of floors you’ll find in a data center: raised and slab. Which one is better? Good question. Let’s explore.

A long time ago in an IT world far, far away it was decided that raised floors were ideal for any room containing large amounts of computing hardware, and that was that. The raised floor became so ubiquitous that many data operators and managers consider “raised floor space” synonymous with “data center.” If you’re building a center, you’re building it with a raised floor. That’s just the way it is, because that’s the way it’s always been, and there is therefore no sense in questioning it.

So that’s that, then. It looks like we’ve wrapped this blog post up early, and you can now stop reading and return to your regularly scheduled daily tasks and routines.