The Future of Data Centre Design

Concrete Legacy
What does the future hold for data centre providers? The shift towards hosting and cloud based deployments as well as the need for resilience and disaster recovery clearly suggests a strong demand for data centre services. Yet increasing competition combined with evolving customer expectation is creating a difficult market dynamic. Just where should new data centres be located? How much capacity is required? And does the traditional fixed concrete build really still make sense in a market increasingly concerned about sustainability?

With data centres that had a predicted life expectancy of 25 years running out of power after just 12 years, and the power density required for cloud services putting huge additional pressure on resources, the dynamics of data centre requirements are changing fundamentally. Today’s cloud based services use up to 15KW of power per rack – yet most data centre buildings in London are typically designed to use no more than 3KW per rack. The numbers simply don’t add up.
So where next for data centre build and design?

Sustainable & Scalable
With the lack of available Capex, data centre investment is tricky. No organisation wants to over-develop and be left with acres of spare capacity – which is a very real risk given the increasing power of IT equipment and use of virtualisation to reduce the server estate. Yet the ability to offer clients scalability is essential. So just what size is best?

Another challenge is the clear need to reduce energy costs and carbon footprint levels – both to improve economic performance and meet customer demands for power usage and sustainability. Yet this is an issue that is fraught with difficulty: virtualisation and consolidation is freeing up space but power consumption continues to rocket. Indeed, designing a data centre to reflect the ever changing technology estate is, in itself, increasingly challenging: careful consideration is vital to ensure that essential data centre redesign or upgrade is economically viable if the business is not to be left with a white elephant.

And what about the building itself? Traditional data centres are huge buildings demanding large amounts of concrete all transported by lorries burning vast amounts of fuel on the way. At the end of life, in 20 years or so, deconstructing a site with high levels of carbon will create large amounts of pollution in the local area. The Environment Agency – or any other Government body for that matter – is increasingly unlikely to sign up to any data centre agreement based in a building that has used huge volumes of carbon based materials.

In addition to power efficient internal design – the much vaunted PUE – organisations are looking far more closely at every aspect of the building fabric. They want a low carbon data centre in every sense of the word – from the use of locally built furniture in meeting rooms to the way the building is constructed.

Prefab Support
These issues are coming together to drive growing interest in the prefabricated modular (PFM) data centre. According to 451 Research the PFM market is evolving rapidly and beginning to win mainstream support – not least due to its use of recyclable materials with low carbon content.

One of most compelling benefits of the modular data centre design is cost. The cost of a modular data centre comes in at around one third of traditional build models. In addition to lower materials cost, the flexibility of the modular design also minimises the cost associated with hooking up the computer equipment to the power network. By enabling the centre to be located closer to the substation, an organisation can avoid the additional costs associated with drawing large amounts of power to a remote site.

And of course, the essential nature of the PFM model is that it fits any size; making it applicable to the organisation looking to relocate an existing in house data centre as well as the fast expanding, large hosting providers. Add in the inherent extensibility of PFM, and organisations can confidently scale up in the future as and when required.

From a Capex legacy perspective, the difference is massive. Furthermore, the flexibility of the prefabricated model makes it far easier to ensure equipment can be installed and upgraded easily irrespective of size or shape. And this is key: in a fast evolving market with a strong focus on sustainability, creating an inflexible data centre that cannot easily adopt innovations in power reduction that could cut energy costs is disastrous. With a modular approach to design, it is far easier to incorporate new, innovative technologies to ensure the data centre remains as eco-efficient as possible.

Long Term Model
Critically, for those that may raise concerns about the robustness and physical security of a prefabricated building when compared to the traditional data centre, these modern sustainable materials can endure the environment as well as, if not better than, concrete. The membranes built around the concrete infrastructure in legacy data centres deteriorate. The modular data centre has a longer life expectancy – and it is expandable on demand, making it far easier to add capacity to meet customer needs as and when required, which is a far more efficient use of finance and resources than building a facility that may remain unused for years.
Furthermore, with leading government departments having approved the use of a modular designed data centre, it is clear these buildings can meet the highest levels of security.

The modular approach really does tick all the boxes. So why, it has to be asked, are some data centre companies still building in concrete?