What Does It Take To Build An Edge Data Center?

If you're a service provider who's considering setting up an edge data center environment within your central office, you might be surprised at its complexity. Like most projects involving sensitive electronic equipment, an edge data center requires a lot of preparation and planning to ensure its success.

The first consideration is where you plan on locating your edge data center. Since edge cloud computing equipment is delicate and expensive, it should be isolated in an environment that features reliable heating, cooling and humidity control. In addition, the environment should also have extra security precautions, a firewall and, ideally, inert gas fire-suppression system.

To deliver service that offers near-perfect reliability or better, you'll want to deploy a number of redundancies to prevent unexpected downtime. These redundancies include equipment, back-up power and, if possible, multiple connections to high speed networks. Plus, as faster and more robust servers are being developed, you will need to build your data center infrastructure with an eye towards the future including a clear migration plan for speeds up to 400Gbps.

To help you get started, CommScope has created this checklist that notes the many intricacies that come with building an edge cloud computing environment. While this list is far from comprehensive, it should provide you with some valuable considerations that you can use to initiate discussions internally and with your contractor.