Commissioning for data centres

Commissioning is a critical element for data centres, demonstrating the facility performs as designed. Effective commissioning improves reliability, identifies single points of failure and enhances operational resilience.

The process establishes an accurate baseline of performance and minimises risk to the facility during operation as a comprehensive testing regime has been completed and key failure and maintenance scenarios have already been tested to ensure systems operate as expected.

An effective commissioning process includes:

• early review of design documents to examine whether the specification and drawings provide sufficient information and detail to enable installers and commissioners to properly commission equipment and systems
• development of a quality assurance process that ensures all equipment and systems are commissioned
• development and review of commissioning procedures and test report templates to ensure that specified and industry practice techniques and test equipment will be used, expected test results are known prior to testing and required tests will be carried out
• witnessing of testing by experienced and qualified personnel to verify that commissioning is being conducted in accordance with the agreed procedures
• review of test reports to validate that expected results have been achieved
• development and execution of functional performance to validate that systems function as required under various loading profiles, failure conditions or input from other systems
• development and execution of integrated systems’ tests to validate that the entire building operates as a holistic system and key data hall environmental and power conditions are maintained through various failure and maintenance scenarios.

Brownfield projects

The main challenge in brownfield sites is ensuring new systems integrate seamlessly with existing infrastructure without causing interruption or failures to existing systems that are operational. Other key challenges include:

• coordinating with existing site operations. construction and commissioning teams to ensure smooth integration and minimisation of potential disruption to operational systems
• aligning software and firmware across new and existing systems
• creating fault scenarios in live environments without causing outages to operational systems.

The 7 stages of commissioning

These are numbered 0 to 6:

1. Design peer review – identifies single points of failure and aligns designs with project requirements
2. Factory testing – ensures equipment is tested before shipment
3. Quality assurance inspections – confirms quality and readiness of installation
4. Start-up testing – verifies independent operation of systems
5. Functional performance testing – tests subsystems independently
6. Integrated systems testing – evaluates how all systems function together
7. System handover – provides training and documentation for operations teams.

Commissioning timeline

A commissioning agent should be involved from the start of a data centre project to capture issues progressively, ensuring the facility is delivered and operates as intended. Getting a commissioning team on board late often means:

• missing critical design flaws, leading to last-minute fixes and increased stress
• compressing timeframes, leading to rushed processes, increased risk of failure and potential health and safety concerns
• delaying operational readiness
• forcing compromises in design.

The future of commissioning in data centres

Liquid cooling technology (LCT)

A key challenge with LCT is that only parts of the system can be fully commissioned for most common designs. The secondary pipework network can still be commissioned, and coolant distribution units (CDUs) can be tested, but the impact of each rack’s installation is very difficult to simulate.

For traditional mechanical technologies, commissioning was a one-off activity until major repair or modification. With direct-to-chip (D2C) solutions, equipment may need to be recommissioned with every new piece of hardware, although this depends on the design and amount of redundancy implemented on day one.

Systems need to be purged and coolant concentrations, flow rates and fluid temperatures reviewed. While purging can be localised, this could present issues for systems that are still online.

Different manufacturers also have varying flow rates and pressure requirements, adding complexity.

Another challenge is testing for water-cooled solutions, which requires specialised load banks that are only now becoming available. The commissioning industry is at ground zero in implementing these solutions, meaning future commissioning will require even more careful planning. Most importantly, records will need to be meticulously maintained to ensure consistency in system performance.

Digital record keeping

Digital recordkeeping will play a bigger role with digital twins becoming more prominent. These create a virtual model of a facility, making future design and expansion easier in the future.