Sean Graham shares his views on why it is essential to know the detailed pros and cons between commercial and industrial automation system hardware, software, and instrumentation as a data center operator considers the facility's automation design and associated costs. Commercial and industrial control system hardware varies widely in capabilities and costs. Input/output (I/O) capacity, performance, redundancy, integration options, and vendor support are some of the major considerations when selecting hardware for data centers. Industrial hardware is designed for real-time control where the processors are more powerful, and the logic execution speeds are measured in milliseconds in place of seconds. One application of industrial hardware in a data center will be for fast-acting pressure control loops.