Smarter Data Center Deployment
Avoiding the 9 most common mistakes in data center deployment.
Common Mistakes to Avoid in Data Center Deployment
Strategic Facility Pitfalls
Drawing from extensive field audits and mission-critical consulting engagements, TIM has identified nine fundamental mistakes that commonly compromise performance, escalate lifecycle costs, and create unneeded operational risks during facility planning and deployment:
Failure to take TCO into account
Optimizing only for initial CapEx while ignoring multi-year OpEx.
Poor cost-to-build estimating
Underestimating site preparation, redundancy, and utility connections.
Improper design criteria
Failing to align engineering specs with real business uptime requirements.
Site selection before design criteria
Committing to locations before power, fiber, and environmental metrics are verified.
Space planning before design criteria
Sizing rooms before power densities and cooling methodologies are chosen.
Designing into dead-end
Lack of modular scalability for high-density compute evolution.
Misunderstanding PUE
Treating PUE as an absolute metric rather than an operating condition.
Misunderstanding certification
Overpaying for tier certifications that do not match operational goals.
Overcomplicated designs
Adding unnecessary complexity that introduces single points of human failure.