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EXIN CDCE study materials
EXIN CDCE study resources

EXIN CDCE: Data centre management and strategy

EXIN CDCE · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.

All guide sections

Data centre management and strategy

Domain 4 - Data centre management and strategy. The exam tests the commercial and organisational layer: business case, lifecycle governance, sourcing decisions, capacity and refresh planning, SLAs, risk and sustainability reporting.

Lifecycle and governance

Strategy → design → build → operate → decommission, with stage gates and a named owner at each stage. Typical roles: data centre manager, facilities/engineering, IT operations, security, compliance and finance. A RACI and a DCIM tool are not decoration - they are how capacity, change and incidents stay traceable.

The money

  • TCO over 10–15 years: capex (building, UPS, cooling, switchgear, cabling, security) plus opex (energy, maintenance contracts, staff, connectivity, compliance).
  • Express options as cost per kW per month so a colocation quote and a build become comparable.
  • Add NPV with a discount rate, depreciation and residual value, and flag stranded capacity - power and cooling you paid for but cannot use or recharge.

Sourcing

Enterprise build, colocation, cloud, hybrid. Compare on availability SLA, achievable power density, speed of scaling, lock-in, exit and egress cost, and who carries the operational risk.

Worked example

1 MW requirement; colocation at €150/kW/month versus a build with €9M capex and €1.1M annual opex.

  • Colocation: 150 × 1,000 × 12 = €1.8M per year; €18M over 10 years, €27M over 15 years.
  • Build: €9M + 10 × €1.1M = €20M at 10 years; €9M + 15 × €1.1M = €25.5M at 15 years.
  • Crossover is around year 12–13 on simple totals, before discounting and residual value. Duration and scale decide the answer - a 5-year horizon with uncertain growth favours colocation. Non-financial factors (control, latency, data sovereignty, in-house capability) then adjust it.

Traps that cost marks

  • Comparing capex only, or ignoring energy price escalation and maintenance renewals.
  • An SLA with no measurement method, reporting frequency or remedy.
  • Ignoring exit cost and data repatriation in a cloud or colocation decision.
  • Capacity plans that ignore hardware refresh raising kW per rack.
  • Using a PUE target in a business case without saying how it will be metered.
  • Overlooking sustainability and regulatory reporting obligations until after the contract is signed.