Modern Data Centers: Designing for Future
Modern
data centers are typically designed to deliver two different levels of service: enterprise quality products designed around scalability, and commodity facilities designed to deliver immediate but not long term solutions. In fact, many data centers can become obsolete within ten years. Data Centers should therefore be designed with the future in mind. Will the facility be able to meet the needs of clients 15 years from now? Flexibility is key.
It’s All About Efficiency
Colocation providers for example, are always seeking to maintain a competitive advantage yet build out facilities with little thought to innovation. Currently, a lot of emphasis has been placed on cooling and energy efficiency. Facebook has been experimenting with immersion cooling, a process where a dedicated server is completely submerged in a conductive cooling liquid.
The Green grid - an international non-profit dedicated to modular data center design and efficiency, recommends data centers run UPS (uninterruptible power supply) in Eco mode, a process that will prevent energy loss in backup power systems. Immersion cooling and UPC Eco Mode are just two perfect examples of efforts being made towards energy efficiency within new data centers.
Servers that run cool require less power. Backup systems that prevent energy loss from occurring also conserve power. Utility costs are a huge factor for any existing facility. Old data centers are very power hungry and end up costing more money to operate. Which brings us to the idea of long-term scalability:
Scalability Is Important
Maintaining flexibility over the course of 15-yearlife cycle depends heavily upon a scalable infrastructure. This includes: rack-space, bandwidth (fiber optic cabling), power requirements and capacities to support server density. If a data center takes on large enterprise class customers they must take into account what their growth potential is; will they double in size and require more bandwidth, servers and power? The good news is, as server densities increase operational efficiencies improve as does the cost to house multiple servers per application.
Flexibility
The advent of cloud storage services has diversified the marketplace. Flexibility in the marketplace can bring in more business and foster longevity, even if enterprise customers outgrow a colocation or data center provider. Offering a variety of services, from the enterprise level to small business level, will give customers the options they need to support scalability. An energy efficient facility will allow for future innovation; cooling upgrades, power supply, redundancy systems as well as vertical scalability to maintain value in the long run. The Data Center industry is competitive and designing for future will ensure longevity in the marketplace.
About the author: James Mulvey is a technical writer and blog director for Colocation America, a dedicated server company specialising in colocation and related services.












