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| Source: Vertiv. Sanghi. |
“A globally connected, always-on, mobile and social world is rapidly transforming how consumers and businesses interact and transact. Hyperscale platforms and the explosion in critical applications shaping tomorrow’s digital economy are redefining information technology and communications (ITC) infrastructure,” said Anand Sanghi, President, Asia, Vertiv. “For 2017, we are seeing increased focus on efficiency, sustainability and data security in the architecture of data centres and the underlying power, cooling and data centre infrastructure management (DCIM) technologies deployed in these data centres, all the way from the cloud to the edge.”
Trends shaping the data centre ecosystem in 2017 include:
Infrastructure races to keep up with connectivity at the edge
Distributed IT and the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) are pushing IT resources closer to users and industrial processes. While the data centre remains core to delivering applications and services, such as point of sale and inventory management, network closets and micro data centres are growing in number and importance as Internet-connected sensors and devices proliferate and remote users demand faster access to information. Responding to these changes, organisations will turn to preconfigured micro data centre solutions that support fast deployment, greater standardisation and remote management across distributed IT locations.
Existing network closets and remote IT locations will also be re-evaluated to ensure the power and cooling provisions are adequate to meet the increased criticality of these locations as they begin to provide localised collection and analysis of real-time data from connected sensors and devices.
Thermal management focuses on sustainability
Fuelled by the desire to drive down energy costs, traditional approaches that focused on delivering “maximum cooling” have been displaced by more sophisticated approaches focused on removing heat as efficiently as possible. Increased use of advanced economiser technologies and the continued evolution of intelligent thermal controls have enabled highly resilient thermal management strategies that support power usage effectiveness levels (PUEs) below 1.2*.
Now, while energy efficiency remains a core concern, water consumption and refrigerant use have emerged as important considerations in select geographies. Thanks to the expanded range of thermal management strategies available today, data centre operators are tailoring thermal management based on data centre location and resource availability. Global market trends show an increase in the use of new technologies leveraging evaporative and adiabatic** cooling that use water to cool the surrounding air. These technologies are delivering highly efficient, reliable and economical thermal management.
Where water availability or costs are an issue, waterless cooling systems have gained traction. A traditional open-loop chilled water-based system uses about 15 million litres of water to cool 1 MW of IT capacity in one year. In contrast, new technologies featuring pumped-refrigerant economisers use no water and introduce no outside air into the data centre. This is ideal as introducing anything new into a data centre could potentially cause problems to the servers in it.
Security responsibilities extend to data centre management
While data breaches continue to garner the majority of security-related headlines, security has become a data centre availability issue as well. The 2016 Ponemon Institute Cost of Data Center Outages study revealed that cyber attacks accounted for 22% of the data centre outages studied.
As more devices get connected to enable simpler management and eventual automation, threat vectors also increase. Data centre professionals are adding security to their growing list of priorities and beginning to seek solutions that help them identify vulnerabilities and improve response to attacks. Management gateways that consolidate data from multiple devices to support DCIM are emerging as a potential solution. With some modifications, they can identify unsecured ports across the critical infrastructure and provide early warning of denial of service attacks.
DCIM proves its value
DCIM is continuing to expand its value, both in the issues it can address and its ability to manage the increasingly complex data centre ecosystem. Forward-thinking operators are using DCIM to address data centre challenges, such as regulatory compliance, Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) requirements, and hybrid environment management. Colocation providers have begun to find that DCIM a valuable tool in analysing their costs by customer and in providing their customers with remote visibility into their assets.
DCIM has emerged as the precursor to IIoT in the data centre, delivering the visibility, increased coordination across systems and support for automation that are at the core of the IIoT value proposition.
Alternatives to lead-acid batteries become viable
New solutions are emerging to the weak link in data centre power systems as operators seek to reduce the footprint, weight and total costs of traditional valve-regulated lead-acid (VRLA) batteries. Data centre operators have long been interested in alternatives to lead-acid batteries, but available technologies have not been able to match the value and storage capacity of traditional batteries. Now, real alternatives are emerging that can reduce footprint, expand runtimes and enhance sustainability.
The most promising of these are lithium-ion batteries. While this battery technology is not new, the improving economics have spurred increased commercialisation efforts for data centres. With prices decreasing and chemistries and construction continuing to advance, lithium-ion batteries are being scaled to handle row- and room-level requirements.
Data centre design and deployment become more integrated
Operators today seek modular, integrated solutions that can be deployed quickly, scaled easily and operated efficiently. Now, this philosophy is being applied to data centre development. Speed-to-market is one of the key drivers of the companies developing the bulk of data centre capacity today, and they’ve found the traditional silos between the engineering and construction phases cumbersome and unproductive. As a result, they are embracing a turnkey approach to data centre design and deployment that leverages integrated, modular designs, off-site construction and disciplined project management. Vendors that bring together infrastructure expertise, design and engineering capabilities and sophisticated project management to deliver a turnkey capability can build better data centres faster.
“Organisations, regardless of industry and size, must continue to evolve their critical infrastructure to deliver exceptional services to their customers. With new trends emerging within the IT space, it is vital for organisations to continue to reevaluate their IT and business strategies and choose (the) right partner that can provide them with the speed, efficiency and agility they require for business growth,” said Sanghi.
*The ideal PUE is 1.
**Adiabatic cooling cools by changing air volumes, which affects the air pressure and turn temperature.
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