DATA CENTRES
their equipment demand with speed-to-market in mind.
Global growth
Data localisation, or data residency, law requires data about a nations’ citizens or residents be collected, processed, and/or stored inside the country, often before being transferred internationally. Usually, the data is transferred only after meeting local privacy or data protection laws, such as giving the user notice of how the information will be used and obtaining their consent.
Protection of information related to social media, financial transactions, governmental agencies, vaccine research and governance across all major countries is driving the construction of local data centers in almost all regions of the world. The local safety codes, electrical infrastructure, utility voltages, sustainability laws and foreign direct investment laws vary widely across the world. The cloud service providers, their colocation partners and the industry suppliers have taken deliberate steps to build on each other’s global presence and experience and drive the data center industry forward to connect the globe digitally at a speed unimaginable before COVID-19 lockdowns. The economies of scale inherent in large global projects facilitates higher investments in the development of energy efficient products and sequence of operations supporting the global focus on ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) investments by responsible corporate citizen. The shift to a modular construction approach has enhanced the need for equipment across the entire infrastructure system to be aligned with minimum onsite coordination, time and cost. The goal is a “plug-and-play” design that optimizes time and resources. It is foreseen that this comprehensive equipment selection will only become increasingly critical as the pace of data center construction enhances and construction times are reduced.
Designing and operating for sustainability Even during this time of high demand, the data center industry is moving from one of the most disruptive and energy intensive businesses to a more sustainable model. Many of the biggest players, like Google, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft, have identified impressive sustainability goals such as using 100% renewable energy and becoming carbon neutral. These big names in the industry are trailblazers for other smaller providers to also move towards more sustainable designs and operations.
Decision makers are also looking to balance speed to support the demand while also achieving their sustainability goals. The cloud service providers, their colocation partners and the industry suppliers have demonstrated a very proactive and decisive approach towards sustainability and carbon neutrality. A growing interest in new refrigerants like R-1234ze demonstrates the focus on low GWP (global warming potential) along with low toxicity and non-flammability at ambient temperatures. In an effort to reduce water consumption in data centers, the HVAC designs have shifted towards air-cooled chillers with economization or inverted operation. Processor manufacturers and server manufacturers are designing IT equipment that can operate at higher cold aisle temperatures. This facilitates the use of direct evaporative cooling via air handling equipment. It also allows for higher chilled water temperature setpoints for the chillers, permitting the Data Center operators to utilize economization or free cooling more frequently. At higher chilled water setpoints, the compressors experience a lower lift and consume less power. Efficient designs, smart sequence of operations and successful use of economization are helping the industry move towards carbon neutrality at a rapid pace, without sacrificing reliability and uptime.
Increasing reliability At a time of a lot of change, we are seeing operation limits pushed to an extreme. Many data center facilities are testing options to further increase reliability. Predictive and prescriptive monitoring and maintenance strategies such as digital AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning) connects the operation data to have the operations team one step ahead. In some situations, restricted access to sites due to COVID-19 risks to facility employees has delayed or impacted planned maintenance, retrofit projects, and capital initiatives. Before COVID-19 there was a push from colocation partners and cloud service providers to embrace more digital solutions but with the risks of COVID-19 there appears to be an acceleration, out of necessity, to move towards increased digital – remote access solutions to reduce the number of humans on site. Many sites are accessing, operating, and even doing some maintaining virtually off-site.
Infrastructure system integration As data centers shift to a darkened operation with fewer people on site, there is going to be continued integration across infrastructure systems primarily aimed at increasing efficiency and reliability. While Data Center infrastructure system integration has traditionally been a goal of DCIM (Data Center Infrastructure Management), critical infrastructure systems will need to come together to more proactively develop and refine digital solutions that achieve these goals. As we continue to see demands in the global
data center market, seamless, reliable, sustainable solutions will be needed to keep everyone on-line and moving forward. As it stands today, there is little indication that the global cloud demand will slow anytime soon. Rather, as the world learns to live and work virtually and becomes more connected more data is generated, processed and stored in an increasingly cloud connected world.
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www.acr-news.com November 2020 37
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