John Huntington
5 May 2014

When you picture the typical scene at a data centre, you might think of hundreds upon hundreds of computers filled with hardware stacked on top of each other and packed into heavy cabinets. The sheer weight of it all can be staggering, and a building’s floor loading capacity is a crucial factor for any company to consider when evaluating data centre solutions.

To maximise floor space, the cabinets that most data centres use can handle 2,500-3,000 pounds of hardware, and the floor has to be sturdy enough to hold that weight. Depending on the amount of equipment, the data centres floor might have to be strong enough to hold as much weight as the floor of a library filled with stacks of books.

Unfortunately, the floors in most buildings can’t do this. Solutions such as restructuring the floor by adding support beams or columns underneath, or inserting a raised floor to redistribute weight, are not always practical.

A floor caving in at the company’s data centre is, to put it lightly, not good.

How much floor loading capacity you need depends on how much equipment you have and how you store it. How much the cabinets weigh, how tall and wide they are, and whether you completely fill them with equipment all affect their pounds per square foot (PSF). A 3,000-lb. cabinet with a footprint of 8.8 sq. ft. will exert about 160 PSF.

Digital Realty has twenty carrier-neutral data centres in thirteen markets across the country, totalling 1.3 million square feet of space. Between them, our data centres average 178 PSF. The Digital Realty ATL1 data centre in Atlanta represents the median floor loading capacity with 185 PSF.

The Digital Realty NJR3 data centre in Clifton, New Jersey, which opened last year and is the first data centre Digital Realty ever built from the ground up, has an amazing floor loading capacity of 400 PSF, strong enough to maintain the heaviest of hardware.

For our West coast facilities, PRT1 in Hillsboro, Oregon facility has a load capacity of 250 PSF, which is amongst the highest in the market. This ensures that our customers can have duplicated footprints within the Digital Realty footprint of data centres.

Whatever your storage needs, we will meet them and any other security measures you need from a data centre. From blueprinting to daily execution, we’re heavily involved in the entire data centre process, ensuring that you get state-of-the-art facilities and equipment when you choose Digital Realty as your data centre services provider.

If you’d like to learn more about the building specifications of Digital Realty’s data centres, we’d love to help. You can connect with us through the contact page.

What Floor Loading Capacity Do Digital Realty Data Centres Have?