Thursday, August 27, 2009

A Closer Look at PTS’ Data Center Education Series

Thanks to everyone who’s expressed interest in participating in our upcoming Data Center Education Series! The response has been very positive and we’re looking forward to the first session which will be held at our headquarters in Franklin Lakes, NJ from September 15 to 17, 2009.

A few of you have emailed me to ask for more information on what will be covered during the training sessions, so I’m posting the course descriptions here for your convenience:


Data Center Planning: Establishing a Floor Plan (Time: 2-3 hours) - A floor plan strongly affects the power density capability and electrical efficiency of a data center, yet many floor plans are established through incremental deployment without a central plan. Once a poor floor plan has been deployed, it is often difficult or impossible to recover the resulting loss of performance. This course provides structured floor plan guidelines for defining room layouts and for establishing IT equipment layouts within existing rooms.

Fire Protection Methods in the Data Center (Time: 1 hour) - Fire in any area of a business can result in millions of dollars of losses and even business failure, but fire in the data center represents one of the greatest risks to any company or institution. This is a foundational course which will introduce the basic theory, prevention, detection and suppression of fire specific to data centers. At the completion of this course you will have a better understanding of the safeguarding methods that are used to protect a data centers hottest commodity, information.

Fundamentals of Cooling (Time: 3-4 hours) - In every data center excess heat has the potential to create downtime. In addition, the performance and lifespan of IT equipment is directly related to the efficiency of cooling equipment. If you’re involved with the operation of computing equipment it's critical that you understand the importance of cooling in the data center environment. This foundational course explains the fundamentals of air conditioning systems, covering such topics as the refrigeration cycle, ideal gas law, condensation, convection and radiation, heat generation and transfer, and precision vs. comfort cooling.

Fundamentals of Power (Time: 3-4 hours) - Before you can understand the power needs of the Data Center, you must first understand the basic concepts and terms related to power measurement, electric power forms, and its generation. This elementary level course explains these power elements and some of today's power problems

Fundamentals of Physical Security (Time: 1 hour) - Today's Data Centers must consider not only network security, but also physical security. This course defines what physical security means for mission critical facilities and identifies what assets it needs to protect. Also discussed are the different means to control facility access, common physical security methods, security devices, and budget considerations related to physical security.

Cabling Strategies for the Data Center (Time: 2 hours) - From a cost perspective, building and operating a data center represents a significant piece of any Information Technology (IT) budget. The key to the success of any data center is the proper design and implementation of core critical infrastructure components. Cabling infrastructure, in particular, is an important area to consider when designing and managing any data center. The cabling infrastructure encompasses all data cables that are part of the data center, as well as all of the power cables necessary to ensure power to all of the loads. It is important to note that cable trays and cable management devices are critical to the support of IT infrastructure as they help to reduce the likelihood of downtime due to human error and overheating. This course will address the basics of cabling infrastructure and will discuss cabling installation practices, cable management strategies and cable maintenance practices. We will take an in-depth look at both data cabling and power cabling.

Data Center Management (Time: 2 hours) - There are a number of management tools currently available to help manage the data center from a number of perspectives - network, availability, asset management, infrastructure monitoring and control. Which of these tools are applicable to your data center? Which tools will best meet your needs?

Data Center Maintenance (Time: 2 hours) - Whether you own, rent or co-locate, whether your data center is 1,000 square feet or 100,000 square feet, whether you are dealing with legacy equipment or the latest high density configurations, you face the same issues with managing the maintenance of your equipment. Data center maintenance is essential to properly maintain and extend the life of your valuable data center infrastructure and prevent unplanned downtime, yet it is often relegated to spreadsheets and paper-based systems. All too often, critical maintenance is overlooked because someone didn’t remember to schedule it or have the right spare parts, tools or personnel available to properly perform the tasks required. This course will discuss the growing use computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS), including those designed specifically for the data center, and how the use of these systems can improve maintenance management in your data center.

Data Center Energy Efficiency (Time: 2 hours) - Is the concept of "greening" the data center hype or reality? This course will discuss practical and effective methods to make your data center more efficient to yield immediate cost savings.

Our instructors will tie in case studies and real world situations to provide concrete examples of how to apply the information learned in the course. Time each day will be spent on open discussion, allowing sharing of industry experience with your peers.

If you haven’t signed up already, please visit http://www.ptsdcs.com/educationseries_webform.asp to reserve your seat. Priced at only $999 per student, the vendor-neutral, module based training includes all course materials in addition to a continental breakfast and lunch each day. SPECIAL OFFER: If you attend with other colleagues from work, you'll all receive a 10% discount.

Our goal is to create a training series that presents the topics of most interest and value to the student. That being said, we welcome suggestions for how we can continue to improve the series. Is a three (3) day training program a good fit for your schedule? Is there a course you'd like to see added? What type of lunch should we serve? Feel free to post a comment to tell us what you think.