Customer Feedback on Our Data Center Reference Designs

Schneider Electric offers a fantastic project planning tool called Data Center Reference Designs. And just like our industry recognized white papers and TradeOff Tools, it’s totally free and easy to access.  Our entire design library can be viewed through our online selector located here. These high level conceptual plans simplify planning by helping project teams quickly determine key project parameters (capacity, redundancy, efficiency, density, budget, and so on). These validated designs along with owner constraints & preferences serve as a very solid input and a great head start into the detailed design phase.

These things aren’t marketing tools with pretty pictures. We have a dedicated System Architecture Engineering team who create them which are then validated by technical experts across our various business units. The design documentation includes a high level “Design Summary” PDF (available through the selector) and an “Engineering Package” (available via registration) which includes CAD drawings of the electrical one lines, piping diagrams, dimensioned floor layouts, a DCIM use case, and an equipment list.

This library of designs has been out for about a year and a half now. We have a growing number of customers and partners who are using them to make quick and easy tradeoffs to figure out what they want to build. Many of them are being used as a foundation for the detailed design that will be ultimately built. Here is a sampling of some of the early feedback that I’ve gotten personally…

“I hadn’t ever really seriously considered prefab, containerized stuff before…but your reference designs crystallized the idea of them for me. The depth of your designs showed me in a very practical sense that prefab could work well for us.” – Engineering Manager for Fortune 500 Company

“What attracted me to the reference designs was that I have previously spent a lot of time and effort putting together a bespoke high level Data center design for clients and it seemed I was reinventing the wheel each time. The reference design covers the high level requirements of my clients and gives them quickly a realistic view of the project so we can kick off the project faster in a more controlled and deterministic fashion.” – Consulting Firm Manager

“…the fact that it provided a description, a checklist of equipment used, single line diagrams and layouts were all seen as very useful tools and information to get from the project outline to a method of reviewing the scheme very quickly. We are going to confirm the selection options required to generate the relevant Reference Design for future use (they had asked how they could have access to this for themselves !).” – Schneider Electric Channel Partner

So I encourage you to check them out…feel free to email me at Patrick.donovan@schneider-electric.com if you have any questions about how to access the documentation or about the designs themselves.

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