Comparing like-for-like

The consolidation of one or more data centres into an existing facility is a common occurrence, however, the common approach of “just trying to fit additional equipment in” typically results in hot spots, reliability problems, inefficiency, and running out of space.

Written by Neil Rasmussen, Senior VP for Innovation at Schneider Electric, the new white paper entitled “Preparing the Physical Infrastructure of Receiving Data Centres for Consolidation” suggests the introduction of self-contained “Pods”, or units of data centre infrastructure.

A pod is a pre-designed collection of IT cabinets, power distribution and dedicated cooling distribution that are deployed as a unit, almost always as a pair of rows of cabinets. The use of this high-density pod overlay method allows an existing legacy data centre to be transformed into a high density, high efficiency data centre during a consolidation project.

As far as efficiency is concerned, the annual PUE of data centres that use the high-density pod overlay approach can be expected to be on the order of 1.35 at full load. While this may be not quite as good as a 1.2 PUE that is possible with a new purpose built data centre, it is much better than the typical 2.0 PUE observed before the pod overlay was deployed.

The self-contained nature of the pod means that minimal planning, design, or engineering is required to place a pod in any existing environment. The use of the pod infrastructure allows for a high degree of standardisation as well as a reduction of the deployment cycle time.

The high-density pod overlay method has already been used successfully in hundreds of commercial consolidation projects, and some of the case studies are highlighted within the white paper. It is an effective method for new facilities as well as for transforming existing legacy data centres into suitable receiving data centres for consolidation, even while they continue to operate.