Data centers are expected to last 25 to 30 years, which means supporting six to 10 generations of IT technology. To address the increasing power and cooling demands of these generational updates, you need to periodically refresh your data center environmental gear for better capacity. But before you start making capital improvements, evaluate if you can make smaller effective changes. You might be able to hold out a while longer via server consolidation, computational fluid dynamics tools, and appropriate cooling upgrades to improve efficiency. If you still need more cooling capacity, this report discusses the major capital improvements to make when all else fails.