Data Center Strategies for the CIO
Robert McFarlane is a principal in charge of data center design for the international consulting firm Shen Milsom and Wilke LLC. McFarlane has spent more than 35 years in communications consulting, has experience in every segment of the data center industry and was a pioneer in developing the field of building cable design. McFarlane also teaches the data center facilities course in the Marist College Institute for Data Center Professional program, is a data center power and cooling expert, is widely published, speaks at many industry seminars and is a corresponding member of ASHRAE TC9.9 which publishes a wide range of industry guidelines.
McFarlane is one of several regular contributors to SearchDataCenter's Advisory Board, a collection of experts working in a variety of roles across the IT industry.
Contributions from Robert McFarlane
- Using inert gas for fire suppression
- Using curtains for hot aisle/cold aisle containment
- Software efficiency: The last frontier?
- Are all air flow needs met when using just RDHX?
- Choosing a DCIM system to monitor your facility
- Balance three-phase power and save your UPS
- Ways to avoid arc-flash hazards in the data center
- Work from the ground up with a data center raised floor
- Storage energy use in the data center: Expert podcast
- Next wave of water-cooled servers on tap
- The realities of PUE and PUE v2
- Avoiding single point of failure design flaws
- Using free cooling in the data center
- Power production and cogeneration options
- Aisle-lighting tips for data center design
- Best practices for maintaining a data center CRAC unit
- Data center cooling and power capacity challenges
- Examining flexible data center design methods
- Considerations for choosing a raised floor
- Selecting raised floors, panels for the data center