Enterprise Sector is evolving with the Data Centre Cooling Technology

When it comes to information technology (IT) infrastructure requirements, data centres are a top priority. Today, data centres are seen as a critical business parameter and not an external facility for storing information and business operation models. They have become crucial for the very functioning of a big business enterprise. Any interruptions in data centre operations can virtually bring down the business if a company doesn't have an efficient backup strategy. Hurricane Sandy, for example, devastated data centres last year in New York.

A recent announcement by Google and Facebook is a testimonial to data centres' growing popularity across enterprises. Both companies announced strategies to build data centres in Iowa with a total investment of over $700 million.

Exponential Demand for Data Centres

Data centre efficiency and sustainability now transcend companies, geographies, and workloads. There is no simple solution, and the challenge is being compounded as a massive digitalization of data worldwide is creating a parallel demand for strategy.

IDC estimates the world's data will grow from 33 zettabytes from 2017 to 175 zettabytes by 2025, and the amount of energy used by data centres continues to double every four years, which indicates they have the fastest-growing carbon footprint of any area within the IT sector.

Although technological advancements are hard to predict, several models forecast that data centre energy usage could surpass over 10% of the global electricity supply by 2030. For this reason, the creation of green, sustainable, multi-tenant data centres has become essential in both the environment and businesses. Green data centres are built on pillars of commitments to innovate green and renewable plans. These include green power, water reclamation, zero water cooling systems, recycling, and waste management. They do not consist of obsolete systems like inactive or underused servers and avail newer, more efficient technologies.

Taking cues from the hyperscalers, green data centres identify the requirement to lead with modular energy-efficient data centre designs from the onset, embrace the latest in building technology and influence the overall supply chain for the real sourcing of materials green data centres.

Economies of Scale

By switching into a green multi-tenant data centre, sustainability benefits are passed on to the businesses and consumers who collectively benefit from the data centres' green IT infrastructure. In this case, the economies of scale are incredibly significant. Instead of a business, such as a large online retailer attempting to create its own green IT environment to power its service delivery, it outsources it to the green data centre that can do it cheaper and better. Consumers can take advantage of the sustainability benefits using their services, and there could be hundreds of businesses like this in a single green data centre.

Additionally, when one deals with the right green data centre, such as QTS Realty Trust focused on sustainability, its impacts go beyond the requirement that one's power is green. There are environmental and philanthropic benefits that can be associated with a company's outsourced IT infrastructure.

One of the critical factors that impact sustainability and energy efficiency discussions is the data centre cooling issue, which now represents between 35-40% of the total data centre energy consumption. Energy-efficient cooling technologies and processes like liquid cooling represent a significant opportunity for data centre operators to minimise energy usage and costs.

Data Centre Cooling Technology

The sole purpose of data centre cooling technology is to maintain environmental conditions suitable for information technology equipment (ITE) operation. Achieving this goal requires omitting the ITE's heat and transferring that heat to some heat sink. In many data centres, the operators expect the cooling system to operate continuously and reliably.

Traditional data centre cooling techniques used a combination of raised floors and computer room air conditioner (CRAC) or computer room air handler (CRAH) infrastructure. The CRAC/CRAH units would pressurize the space below the raised floor and push cold air through the perforated tiles and into the server intakes. When the cold air passed over the server's components and vented out as hot exhaust, that air would be returned to the CRAC/CRAH for cooling. Many data centres would set the CRAC/CRAH unit's return temperature as the primary control point for the entire data floor environment.

Today's data centres use various innovative data centre cooling technologies to maintain ideal and efficient operating conditions. They drive cold air on more complicated heat transfer technologies. Some even rely upon external sources of cold air or water to facilitate more energy-efficient data centre cooling.

Wrapping UP

As power demands continue to increase, new data centre cooling technologies will be required to keep facilities operating at peak capacity. Evaluating data centres' power and cooling capacities are crucial for enterprises.

The enterprise sector can make better long-term decisions about its IT infrastructure by recognising facilities with a reliable data centre infrastructure in place that can drive efficiencies and improve performance. Given the challenges involved with migrating data, finding a data centre partner with the power and cooling capability to accommodate both present and future requirements can offer a strategic advantage for a growing organisation.

Global Market Insights (GMI) projects that the worldwide market for data centre cooling will grow from USD 10 billion in 2016 to USD 25 billion by 2026 at a CAGR of 15%.