Setting up a data center is easy. Except that the first time you do it you're going to screw up badly. In order to make as much sense as he does, the writer of this book must have screwed up several installations. It's clear that he knows whereof he speaks.

There are only a couple of areas that I'd stress more highly. He talks of power and cooling. A lot of people used such figures, especially people who were setting up big co-location centers. Then these new 1U and 2U servers started coming out, and the number of watts per square foot or meter skyrocketed. Watts were a direct measure of power needed, and in turn of the amount of cooling needed. It also seems that every new Intel processor needs more power. The new Pentium D takes about 140 watts. Four of them in a 2U cabinet is over 600 watts per unit (adding a little for other stuff). 24 of these in a rack is 14,400 watts in about a square meter. The highest rating he shows is 2,000 watts per square meter. Do some calculating before you design.The next thing I'd add is put your backup center a long ways away from your primary center, like maybe in Europe. A fully redundant center in the same building when an earthquake/bomb/hurricane/fire cuts off power/telephone or whatever does you no good. You might want to outsource this secondary site, just as he says. Or maybe you can put it in the London office and get a good excuse to go visit once in a while.