2 September 2010

Network Dictionary – Brownfield

Brownfield Data Centre refers to upgrading, rebuilding or overhauling an existing data centre so that it can be reused.

Abstract

This term is abstracted from government programs and property developers. Greenfield development refers to turning farmland into housing – as in, turning a green fields of grass into houses. As such, currently unpopular because of urban sprawl.

Brownfield development refers to taking land that has been abandoned or no longer viable and turning that into a new development. Brownfield developments often require the existing land from factory or industrial buildings to be “rehabilitated” so that it can be used for housing.

Networking

Brownfield Data Centre refers to upgrading, rebuilding or overhauling an existing data centre so that it can be reused. This rehabilitation process can mean different things to different companies. Some areas of change:

  • upgrading cooling / chillers
  • add airflow enhancements such as hot / cold aisles
  • upgrading generators and UPS systems to new / upgraded capacity
  • increase power density to 15KW per rack (insert number as needed)
  • rip and replace of legacy cabling
  • implementing new network designs
  • implementing blade servers or new high performance brick servers

This term is often used by Resellers / Vendors to rapidly describe the opportunity to managers or non-execs who want a description of a multimillion pound project, with dozens of work streams, in a single paragraph.

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About Greg Ferro
Greg is a Network and Security Architect / Designer / Engineer working freelance in the UK and worked for Resellers, DotCom's, Large Corporate's and Service Providers across a variety of products & Vendors. He prefers to work for end users, believes in the life cycle, total cost of ownership and that near enough is often good enough. He likes talking about himself in the first person to feel "royal", even when hosting the Packet Pushers Podcast on Data Networking. More about Greg at http://etherealmind.com/who-am-i/ and you can follow him on Twitter.

Comments

  1. nick says:

    As soon as I saw the term brownfield, I assumed something totally different.

Trackbacks

  1. [...] to implement “patches of green” using the VCE model where a cluster of compute power is brownfield developed in your existing data centre, you are not going to realise the benefits of a DCB [...]

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