Data Center Urbanization: Proactive Customization

In a very short time, data centers have experienced exceptional densification, thanks to increasingly powerful IT equipment. Today, six racks can provide the same capacity as a 400 m² IT room did ten years ago! In parallel, IDC anticipates that the 'global datasphere' will reach 163 zettabytes (163 trillion gigabytes) by 2025, which is 10 times more than in 2016 with 16.1 ZB.

To cope with this accelerated growth in storage needs, data center managers are developing new approaches to continuously optimize IT rooms and their associated efficiency. This requires expertise across all elements that contribute to the proper functioning of data centers: information system architecture (type of hosted servers, network cabling, etc.), data center infrastructure (capacity, power supply, cooling systems, high-density cabling system), and building (surface area, security, safety, etc.). Fine modeling of these elements, using thermodynamic simulations, allows for optimizing urbanization upstream of the construction of a new data center or the transformation of an existing site.

Planning urbanization upstream of a data center's production launch is essential, but not sufficient. Without rigorous operation of the IT room and its assets, efficiency can quickly degrade. This implies equipping oneself with a DCIM (Data Center Infrastructure Management) solution to monitor and manage all these resources, formalizing and applying documented procedures, and defining key performance indicators (KPIs) to track – during the build and run phases – to manage the data center in the short, medium, and long term (availability rate, capacity planning, energy required for equipment operation, PUE, etc.). It should be noted that DCIM tools are constantly evolving, making continuous training necessary to exploit their full potential.

Beyond the endogenous elements of the data center, technological watch is essential: it is by perfectly understanding the possibilities offered by the market that it is possible to develop and maintain one's data center at the state of the art, according to technological evolutions. Immersion cooling, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, indoor wireless connectivity, edge computing, or hyperconverged hybrid structures are all evolutions to evaluate and integrate into the urbanization of a data center in 2018, to optimize its performance, its lifespan, and consequently, its overall operating costs. Connectivity to network infrastructures, particularly via fiber or 5G, will play a crucial role in the coming years to increase throughput and reduce latency.

However, despite a number of best practices, there is no magic recipe for data center urbanization and operation. Customization is essential: each company and each business is unique. This translates into specific operating and urbanization procedures for each site. With the continuation of Moore's Law and continuous R&D developments, particularly in the areas of energy performance, there is no doubt that the scope of urbanization will continue to evolve in the coming decades.

By Frédéric Perrigault, Director of IT Consulting and Engineering Department, APL