Three "fairy tale" ways to build a data center

There is a very important indicator for evaluating data centers, PUE. PUE is the abbreviation of Power Usage Effectiveness. It is an indicator for evaluating the energy efficiency of data centers. It is the ratio of all energy consumed by the data center to the energy used by IT loads, and is the inverse of DCIE (data center infrastructure efficiency).

PUE = total data center equipment energy consumption/IT equipment energy consumption. PUE is a ratio with a benchmark of 2. The closer it is to 1, the better the energy efficiency level.

From PUE indicators and construction time to the site and data center equipment, these will affect your data center design and construction. Here are three suggestions for reference.

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The construction plan of the data center needs to have a diverse range of adaptability, including business needs, power supply and scalability of the data center.

There are different ways to build a data center. Which method should be used for data centers with different purposes? Traditional equipment needs to meet modern needs. Such data centers need to consider their scalability and flexibility; while centralized and modular designs are suitable for data centers in newly planned locations.

In line with the concept of green environmental protection

We look at a data center in Athens, Greece. It is a fully modular design located in a small forest. This data center serves as a backup center for government agency data. The construction and design of the data center is strictly controlled and does not damage the ecological environment of the river.

The data center was built with minimal impact in mind, including 14 kW racks in 400 square meters of space, and with hot aisle containment and a special cooling system, it does not affect the ecology of the nearby river.

Since the data center is located far from the population center, everything from the server to the filtration system does not require human intervention. Small footprint, integration into the environment, and reliable operation are the minimum basic conditions for a data center.

The construction and management of data center infrastructure requires ensuring that the equipment meets green environmental protection requirements: PUE of approximately 1.18 and renewable energy, which is the basic construction level in data centers.

In this case, it is not feasible to consider cost saving - modular construction allows the original space and resources to be reasonably matched.

Building a data center with modern metrics

Building a data center in an old factory in the city is also an option. The focus of a hosting provider configuring a data center is to prevent the data environment from being damaged, rather than just the equipment. We can look at the 60,000 square foot former American Steel Structure Factory in Philadelphia (see Figure 1) to start installing a modular three-story data center.

"The existing facility - the size of the site, the thickness of the concrete and steel building - would not be environmentally friendly today," said Sean, one of the data center's founders.

Unlike traditional data centers built in buildings, this data center is built in a container-like space with data security as the main focus. Because most users manage servers remotely, no one directly uses physical servers unless necessary. Therefore, such a data center only occupies 1,000 square feet of space.

Due to the small size of the hosting center, the company will modularize the power supply, network and temperature control systems. Different modules can be easily added or simplified.

Modular data centers integrate traditional settings and save a lot of space.

Innovating on tradition

For the safety of data centers, many data centers isolate the external environment. Even the staff work and live in the data center for a long time. It is very necessary to create a home environment, because such data centers basically have lounges and toilets. If employees have a sense of belonging in the data center, they will reduce shirking and improve work efficiency because employees are in a relaxed state. Figure 3.

A data center with a nice environment, including a lounge and cafe.

The internal construction of the data center needs to be simple and organized to facilitate the addition, removal and inventory of equipment, etc.

This is a very simple, bright, and well-organized data center room. Figure 4. Such a standard data center room requires twelve-inch concrete walls. Power and other pipelines are color-coded, including redundant power cables. Servers, equipment, air conditioners, etc. are all labeled.