A minimally robust infrastructure is going to include power-switching equipment and generators. But almost no one stops there. Added fault tolerance includes batteries or flywheels for the uninterruptible power supply (UPS), reserve water supplies in case your utility water is interrupted, redundant components, and possibly even multiple independent commercial power connections. Then you have to protect yourself from fire and natural disasters. And once the data center is built, you're going to have to field a crew to monitor and maintain it.

As Amazon CTO Werner Vogels said at the recent Next Generation Data Center conference, unless you're in an industry where having a highly efficient, in-house data center translates directly into revenue, you might be better off running your applications in someone else's data center.

This solution isn't right for everyone, but as utility costs rise and growing demand squeezes the support infrastructure even tighter, it's worth considering.

2. Weigh the costs and benefits of green design.
Rising costs and consumption rates are driving electricity concerns to the front of IT planning conversations. Items like transformers, electrical wiring, cooling and UPS can have large, fixed electrical losses, taking a slice off your available power before it gets to the first server.

The Green Grid, a consortium of information technology companies interested in improving data center energy efficiency, recommends right-sizing your infrastructure by eliminating redundant components, installing only the equipment you need to make your data center run today. According to the group's Guidelines for Energy-Efficient Data Centers, right-sizing the infrastructure can save as much as 50 percent off the electric bill.

But there is another wrinkle to the energy story that's only just started to work its way into data center planning: Our national utility infrastructure is starting to show signs of wear.

The bridge collapse in Minneapolis and massive power outages in the early years of this decade are symptoms of a rapidly declining national critical infrastructure. Events like the outage on Aug. 14, 2003, which left 50 million people around the Great Lakes without power, are expected to become more common over the next several years unless significant steps are taken to rein in demand and increase the capacity and reliability of our aging power grid.

According to the most recent report of long-term power utility reliability by the North American Electric Reliability Council, demand for electricity is expected to grow 19 percent in the next 10 years, but generation capacity is expected to grow only by 6 percent. This means that the capacity margin is decreasing every year, and surges in demand or regional weather events are more likely than ever to cause outages around the country.