Data Center Industry Terms
- Bonding
- The permanent joining of metallic parts to form an electrically conductive path that will ensure electrical continuity and the capacity to conduct any current to be present in a safe manner.
- BOOTP
- Bootstrap Protocol. Protocol allowing (possibly) diskless network computer to be booted, downloading configuration (such as IP address) and the operating system from a server over the network.
- BPS
- Bits Per Second. Used when specifying connection speeds across networks. When calculating the maximum throughput across a network remember that network communications itself has some overhead. As a rule of thumb therefore divide by 10 to get the number of bytes that this equates to.
| Speed |
Maximum achievable throughput |
| 28.8Kbps |
2.8 K-bytes per second |
| 56Kbps |
5.6 K-bytes per second |
| 10Mbps |
976 K-bytes per second (almost 1MB a second) |
| 100Mbps |
9.5 M-bytes per second (almost 10MB a second) |
- Brownout
- A brown out is an extended low-voltage state. An example of a brownout happens during peak electrical demands in the summer, when utilities cannot meet the requirements and must lower the voltage to limit maximum power.
- BTU
- British Thermal Unit. BTUs are typically used to rate air conditioners (and some heaters). One BTU is defined as the energy required to increase the temperature of one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit. To convert from BTUs to KWs: use 1 watt = 3.4129BTUs. This means that for typical air-conditioners:
| BTUs | approx watt equivalent |
| 6000 | 1.8KW |
| 8000 | 2.3KW |
For air conditioners the typical power consumption will be less than half their cooling rating.
As a guide: 1 person approximates to 500 BTU and one PC approximates to 500 BTU.
- Budget
- A fiscal plan, usually for a given time period and/or for a given project
- Bus
- A conductor, which may be a solid bar or pipe, normally made of aluminum or copper, used to connect one or more circuits to a common interface. An example would be the bus used to connect a substation transformer to the outgoing circuits.
- C Rate
- A term used primarily outside the US, to express battery cell capacity (at specified references), or charge and discharge rates.
- Cable Tray
- A rigid structural system used to support cables and raceways. Types of cable trays include ladder, ventilated trough, ventilated channel, and solid bottom.
- CAL
- Client Access License.
- Capacitor
- Any AC circuit element possessing the property of capacitance (i.e., the ability to store a charge). Normally a capacitor is a dedicated device, designed for the prime purpose of exhibiting the property of capacitance (as opposed to inductive devices, in which inductance is used by the device to produce other results, such as turning a motor shaft).
- Category 5 cable
- Also known as "Cat 5", this cable is used for fast Ethernet and telephone communications. The cable is constructed of 4 twisted pair of copper wire.
- CCSE
- 1. Check Point Certified Security Expert.
2. Center for Computational Sciences and Engineering, at Berkeley. - CDMA
- Code Division Multiple Access, a third generation digital wireless technology.
- Ceiling mounted AC unit
- A small precision air conditioner hung from, or suspended above, a ceiling. This type of air conditioner comes in many designs, but usually is connected to a heat rejection unit on an outdoor pad or rooftop via refrigerant or water lines.
- CFM
- The abbreviation for cubic feet per minute. CFM is used to measure the flow of air through a delivery system or space.
- CGI
- Common Gateway Interface. Interface standard allowing programs to interface to web servers. CGI programs can be written in any compilable language. CGI programs are executed on the server, normally in response to some input from a web page.
- Change Management
- A methodology of planning and coordinating, and communicating about activities in the data center.
- Characteristic Impedence
- The opposition that a cable or component gives to the flow of an alternating electrical current.
- Charge
- In batteries, it is the conversion of electrical energy into chemical energy within a secondary cell.
- Checkpoint
- At a database checkpoint the database flushes out data not yet written to disk.
- Chilled Water System
- A type of precision cooling system widely used in mid-sized to large IT environments. A chilled water system uses water as a cooling medium. Cold water is pumped from a chiller to computer room air handlers designed to cool the space. A chilled water air conditioner can be thought of as similar to a car radiator with a fan, with hot air being cooled by being blown through a cool radiator. In a chilled water system cooling an IT facility, the chilled water may be provided as a utility in the building, or special dedicated water chillers may be installed.
- Chiller
- A device used to continuously refrigerate large volumes of water. A chiller uses the refrigeration cycle to produce large volumes of chilled water (typically at 45-48°F / 7-9°C) that is distributed to Computer Room Air Handlers (CRAH) units designed to remove heat from the IT environment.
- CI
- 1. Continuous Improvement.
2. Customer Intelligence. - CIPI
- Critical Infrastructure Protection Initiative
Clamping level
The voltage level above which a surge suppression device diverts energy away.
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