Hey,
Does a data center really have to have Raised Flooring? Also, does it make much of a difference if any at all?

I've not seen a decent computer room or DC without raised flooring.

It gives you a simple & easy route for cabling (via suitable holes in the floor tile under each cab. Generally 19" racks seem to be built for cable entry from the bottom, although I guess you could run cables from the side or top.

Not sure about this... but potentially the under floor void could be useful as an intake of cooler air.

If you've ever had to route bunches of cables beween cabs that are floor mounted you'll soon wish they had a big hole in the floor to an accessible under floor void :-)

Most people have told us that Raised Flooring isn't needed and major data centers like Equinix has no Raised Flooring and is still amazing even without it. My question is if it is really worth it to install the Raised Flooring. Cause, it is I believe around $30/sq. I think it is a good idea to have it for Cable Management. CRAC Units then have to be purchased.

No you do not have a raised floor, but yes its good for managing cable. When I was in Cisco we had a network in class, but we had what you would call a "raised ceiling" Basically all the wiring was done in the raised ceiling and the wires were brought down through metal pipes for a pop connection. Most of the wires are marked with a tag for network adminstrators. The bad side of a raised ceiling is due to the lights and neon lights they cause something called EMS(Electromagnetic Static) which slows down the network. If you build a network with a raised ceiling I suggest using Fiber Optic cable since it elimates EMS.

I know it's good for Cable Management which is what I like about it.

would be alot cheaper and easier to replace damaged/faulty cables with rasied flooring :happydanc

Well, really good data centers have both raised flooring and overhead cable management. The raised flooring with plenum cooling (cooling from the floor up) is much more efficient then just blasting the air conditioners all over the place. You can also run the electrical under the flooring, which leaves plenty of space on the overhead for network cables, fiber, etc.

A raised ceiling is just as good as a raised floor. I dont think there is much of a difference and I disagree... I think a chilled room overall is the best. It takes more AC, but nothing is that room will emit a large amount of heat.

A raised floor will provide an overall chilled room, it will just cool in a much more efficient manner. Simply blasting the AC leaves hot spots around the data center. Raised flooring makes it much easier to create circulation patterns to keep the entire facility chilled.

Believe me, go to a data center that just blasts the AC and then go to a data center with raised flooring and an efficient cooling patterns and you will definitely notice the difference. There is a very noticeable difference between facilities that were designed to be data centers and "data centers" that are just converted office space.

Regards,
Aaron