LeanSys Data Centre Training Framework

Certified Data Centre Specialist (CDCS®)

CDCS® Overview

With few exceptions, modern enterprises depend heavily on IT to deliver business-critical services—often in real-time and directly to end users. This makes it essential that mission-critical data centres are designed, maintained, and operated with maximum availability, efficiency, and resilience in mind.

Yet in practice, many data centres still fall short of meeting the increasingly demanding requirements for availability, capacity, safety, and energy efficiency. This challenge is further intensified in high-compute environments, where advanced workloads such as AI, HPC, and large-scale data analytics drive up power densities and place significant stress on traditional cooling systems. Ensuring thermal performance in such conditions is now just as vital as electrical reliability.

The Certified Data Centre Specialist (CDCS^®) is a comprehensive three-day course designed to equip participants with the knowledge and skills to act as informed, capable counterparts when dealing with data centre design and operations especially in high-demand environments. Participants will be able to evaluate design proposals for accuracy, effectiveness, and efficiency, including solutions related to power and cooling infrastructure.

CDCS^® is an essential certification for data centre professionals seeking to enhance their technical credibility and decision-making capabilities. It is also a prerequisite for those aiming to attain the elite Certified Data Centre Expert (CDCE^®) status.

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Audience

The primary audience for this course includes data centre specialists, facilities managers and IT professionals who work in and around data centres and are responsible for ensuring and enhancing their availability and manageability around the data centre and having the responsibility to achieve and improve high-availability and manageability of the data centre.

Prerequisites

Prerequisites participants must hold a valid CDCP^® certificate in order to be able to register for the CDCS^® class.

Course Benefits

After completion of the course the participant will be able to:

Understand the data centre design life cycle, including the distinct stages involved.
Discuss the data centre requirements at a great level of detail with vendors, suppliers and contractors to ensure that these requirements are met.
Validate design documentation, cost quotations, and technical proposals provided by vendors and contractors to confirm compliance with requirements.
Understand redundancy levels for both the data centre design/setup and maintenance.
Understand the various building considerations such as bullet proofing, seismic activity mitigation, fire ratings and thermal stability.
Understand the correct installation practices for raised flooring systems and to prevent issues such as misalignment, level discrepancies, and leakage.
Understand how to read a Single Line Electrical Diagram to effectively identify and mitigate common design flaws.
Choose the correct UPS and parallel configuration, while gaining the knowledge required to recognise and avoid typical errors associated with parallel installations.
Understand how to calculate battery banks and assess vendor-proposed configurations to verify compliance with design and performance requirements.
Understand the appropriate separation distances needed to mitigate electromagnetic field (EMF) risks to human health and avoid interference with sensitive equipment.
Understand the fundamental cooling system design, encompassing effeciency metrics, installation prerequisites, airflow rates (CFM), temperature differentials (Delta-T), and other essential performance parameters.
Understand how to evaluate and select advanced liquid cooling solutions that are specifically designed to meet the thermal and operational demands of AI and high-performance computing (HPC) environments.
Understand contamination factors and limitations.
Understand fire suppression systems, including the various available options, methods for calculating gas volume requirements, and procedures for verifying correct system installation.
Understand how to assess data centre energy efficiency using industry-standard metrics, and explore methods to enhance overall energy performance.

Course Syllabus

Data Centre Design/Life Cycle Overview

Phases of the data centre life cycle

Standards and Rating Level Definitions

Rating levels history and definitions
Standards and guideline comparison
N-redundancy options
Distributed redundant options
Concurrent maintainability
Fault tolerant
Substation requirements
Example topologies
Maintenance options

Building Considerations

Building location and floor loading considerations
Floor and hanging loads requirements
Firing rating for walls and glass
Blast protection and bullet proofing
Forced entry protection

Advanced Raised Floor & Suspended Ceiling

Raised Floor installation requirements
Common raised floor problems
Seismic protection
Requirements for suspended ceiling

Advanced Power

Electrical formulae
Single Line Diagram (SLD)
Overcurrent protection devices
Earth Leakage protection
Sizing of protective components
Surge protection
Power cabling and PDU requirements
Types of generators
Generator components
Fuel storage and calculation
Generator parallelling
Required UPS specifications
UPS parallel configuration
Harmonic filters
Battery bank terminology
Calculating battery banks
Battery charging
Parallelling battery banks
Battery testing
Battery case selection
Flywheel
Hydrogen fuel cells

Advanced Electro Magnetic Fields

Sources of EMF
Single and three phase radiation
Measuring EMF
Safe distance guidance
Calculation of EMF attenuation factors

Advanced Cooling

Cooling definitions
Psychrometric chart
ASHRAE recommendations
Heat dissipation
Equipment airflow
Floor plan set-up
Types of perforated tiles
Rack door construction
Delta-T and impact
Optimizing airflow
Thermal unit conversions
Calculating air volume displacement (CFM/CMH)
Cooling capacity calculations
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
Air-conditioner efficiency
SHR impact on OPEX
Efficiency indicators
Air-conditioner selection
Humidity control
Redundancy requirements
Installation requirements
Service corridor considerations
Set points and calibration
Advanced cooling technologies – air cooling
Advanced cooling technologies – liquid cooling

Advanced Fire Protection

Fire triangle
Fire detection systems
Installation and testing of smoke sensors
Water-based suppression systems
Gas-based suppression systems
Calculate gas content
Release and hold times
Fire detection panel requirements
Verification of installation
Ongoing maintenance
Alternative systems

Designing and Installing Scalable Network Cabling Systems

TIA-942 cabling structure topology
Copper and fibre cabling
ToR and EoR design
Installation best practices
Grounding and bonding
Cables labelling and administration

Environmental Specifications / Contamination Control

Acoustic noise effects, regulations, specifications and limits
Data centre contamination categories
Contamination measurements, standards and limits
Preventive measures

Data Centre Efficiency

Business drivers for environmental sustainability
Green standards and guidelines
Power Usage Eectiveness (PUE)
PUE categories
Additional performance metrics
Open Compute Project (OCP)
Savings on cooling infrastructure
Savings on light infrastructure

Delivery Structure and Methods

The CDCS^® course is lectured by an EPI Certified Instructor using a combination of lectures and question-and-answer sessions to discuss participants’ specific needs and challenges experienced in their own environment. Participants are able to tap into the extensive experience of the trainer enabling them to validate and improve their own environments thus adding tremendous business value.
CDCS^® course available in the following delivery methods:
- ILT – Instructor Led Training (Schedule)
- VILT – Virtual ILT (Schedule)
- TOD – Training On Demand (More)
The classes are available on public schedule as well as private group training.

Exam

Exam: Certified Data Centre Specialist (CDCS^®)

The exam is a 90-minute closed book exam, with 60 multiple-choice questions. The candidate requires a minimum of 45 correct answers to pass the exam.

Certification & Accreditation

Candidates who successfully pass the exam will receive the official ‘Certifed Data Centre Specialist’ certificate. The certification is valid for three years after which the student needs to re-certify. More information is available on the EPI corporate website at www.leansysitsolutions.com The CDCS^® course and certification is accredited by EXIN, which is a global, independent and not-for-profit accreditation and examination institute. EXIN’s mission is to improve the quality of the IT and data centre sectors, the proficiency of IT and data centre professionals and the IT users, by means of accreditation of course material as well as independent examination and certification. Every day, EXIN examinations are taken in more than 125 countries on six continents, and in more than 15 languages.

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