7 Cool Data Center Innovations
We've identified seven key innovations being integrated into data centers to further expand capabilities -- or to provide vastly improved efficiencies in terms of energy consumption. Here's what you need to know.
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Data centers are like snowflakes -- no two are exactly the same. Sure, they may all consist of similar building blocks, but each one is put together differently -- and each is designed with different priorities in mind. As time goes on, those differences continue to grow.
Computing needs and power consumption are the two primary driving forces causing data centers to be built with ever more customization. As the world's demand for data center facilities continues to expand, we see a departure from traditional data centers and a movement toward the next-gen data center, guided by several new innovations.
We've identified seven key innovations being integrated into data centers to further expand capabilities -- or to provide vastly improved efficiency in terms of energy consumption.
When we look at an expansion of capabilities, you'll find that the traditional, massive, and isolated data center structures to which we've grown accustomed are no longer meeting today's needs in terms of mobility, redundancy, and flexibility. Cloud computing, the internet of things (IoT), automation, and borderless security are among the technology movements forcing these types of changes to data centers.
Energy savings is a focus for many data center innovations. The old-school method of using inefficient and expensive air conditioning is no longer a suitable option in today's world.
Many great minds have been hard at work figuring out ways to cool computing components using far less electricity -- or sometimes using no electricity at all. It's interesting how these power-saving methods range dramatically from very simple -- almost painfully obvious methods -- to using advanced software intelligence techniques that are truly groundbreaking.
What does the data center of the future look like? Why? Once you've reviewed these seven key data center innovations, tell us what you imagineĀ in the comments section below.
In 2014, Google acquired DeepMind, a British artificial Intelligence (AI) firm, for a bit over $600 million. Since that time, the DeepMind technology and resources have been hard at work on solving the energy efficiency problem plaguing most data centers today. Google has been testing the AI on energy efficiency in its own data centers, and the results have shown an overall power consumption reduction of approximately 40%.
Microsoft's Project Natick -- the underwater data center -- has been in the news, and it's been discussed for some time. It's admirable for its simplicity -- the idea of using cold ocean water to cool infrastructure hardware -- and for its absurdity. Who would think that mixing saltwater, water, electricity, and sensitive components is a good idea?
Apparently, it's far from absurd. In fact, the first generation of Natick was so successful the next generation is already in the works. Expect the new Natick data center to be about four times larger than its predecessor.
Given all the hype surrounding Software Defined Networking (SDN), there still isn't a whole lot of it being implemented in enterprise data centers as of yet. All of that might be changing, driven largely by cloud service providers.
For example, Megaport and Cologix are teaming up to offer Cologix customers a broadened array of cloud services through the use of Megaport's highly elastic SDN fabric. Connecting Cologix customers to the Megaport ecosystem provides access to a number of previously unavailable cloud services.
The use of outside air to cool data centers has been tried a few times with varying levels of success. Facebook is one company that has had success using free cooling techniques over the years. In fact, its latest European data center, which broke ground in Clonee, Ireland, is expected to use the ocean breeze to cool its servers and network infrastructure -- this despite the need to engineer a way to remove highly corrosive salt from the outside air before it reaches sensitive electronics.
Advances in mobile computing, IoT, and fog computing have made running applications out of only one or two data centers less efficient than it was in the past. Because of increased latency and bandwidth requirements, micro data centers are popping up around the globe The idea is to bring content closer to the edge, so the overall experience is identical no matter where you are on the planet.
Close-coupled cooling is a relatively common technique in large data centers, colocations, and cloud provider networks. The cooling method is ideal for efficiently cooling densely packed racks of servers, storage, and network components.
Smaller data centers haven't been able to upgrade to this option due to cost and design constraints. However, increasing electricity costs -- and increasing blade server densities -- are forcing small and mid-size data centers to cough up the money to pay for an effective, and ultimately, efficient cooling system.
This technique is still in the early development stages. A few months ago, optical network company Adva Optical Networks announced it will play a key role in the development of Directly Modulated Lasers on Silicon chips -- a project known as DIMENSION.
The goal of DIMENSION is to "create a platform for single-chip electro-optical integration." Basically, this means lasers will be built directly onto silicon chips in order to speed processing and data transport. The technique will also eliminate a great deal of the heat and electricity currently generated and consumed using traditional silicon chips.
If you think data centers have reached critical mass in terms of how enterprises leverage them today, you may be in for a shock. If projections are anywhere near accurate, then we're looking at global growth rate in new data centers of approximately 10% to 15% each year for the foreseeable future. If that's the case, many of these new facilities will likely be implementing one or more of these innovations to reduce overall energy consumption and keep ahead of computing needs.
If you think data centers have reached critical mass in terms of how enterprises leverage them today, you may be in for a shock. If projections are anywhere near accurate, then we're looking at global growth rate in new data centers of approximately 10% to 15% each year for the foreseeable future. If that's the case, many of these new facilities will likely be implementing one or more of these innovations to reduce overall energy consumption and keep ahead of computing needs.
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