Towards dual carbon: Green demands and competition focus in East and West computing

If we take stock of the hottest trends in the technology circle in the first half of 2022, East Data West Computing is definitely on the list. At the beginning of 2022, four ministries including the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology determined the construction of the "East Data West Computing" project. Ten data center clusters will be established in eight places including the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, and Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area to complete the overall layout and design of the national integrated data center system. The intensive data center construction has since begun.

The establishment of the East Data West Computing Project stems from the supply and demand adjustment of computing power and energy between the east and west regions. The developed eastern regions have a strong demand for data and computing power, but the computing power facilities for processing data and the energy supply are limited by cost and energy consumption in the eastern region where every inch of land is valuable. The western region is rich in land, energy and other resources. The clustered and centralized planning and development of data centers in the western region can optimize the spatial layout of data centers and effectively utilize renewable energy in the western region to promote the green, low-carbon and high-quality development of data centers.

As a core resource in the digital economy era, computing power demand is driving the rapid deployment of data centers. However, big data centers that run 24 hours a day are also large energy consumers. Research institute data show that over the past decade, the overall electricity consumption of my country's data centers has increased by more than 10% per year. According to IDC, by 2024, data center electricity consumption will account for more than 5% of the total electricity consumption in society.

Under the requirements of the dual-carbon strategy, data centers, which consume large amounts of energy, have also been given special attention by the government. In the East-West Computing Project, the construction standards for data centers are becoming increasingly stringent, with more emphasis on low-carbon energy conservation, and the requirements for the PUE value of data centers are also getting higher and higher. ​

PUE Mission of Data Center

The PUE value specifically refers to a value used to measure the energy consumption of a data center, which is the ratio of all energy consumed by a data center to the energy consumed by IT equipment. In simple terms, the closer the PUE value is to 1, the better the energy conservation and emission reduction is, and the larger the PUE value, the more electricity is consumed by supporting infrastructure such as cooling and power supply.

Under the requirement of sustainable development, the central and local governments have repeatedly proposed energy-saving and carbon-reduction transformation of high-energy-consuming industries. Data centers, as traditional large energy consumers, have been listed as key areas many times and clear transformation requirements have been put forward.

In February 2019, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Guiding Opinions on Strengthening the Construction of Green Data Centers", stipulating that by 2022, the average energy consumption of data centers will basically reach the international advanced level, and the PUE of newly built large and ultra-large data centers will be reduced to below 1.4.

In July 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Three-Year Action Plan for the Development of New Data Centers (2021-2023)", which requires that the energy efficiency level of new data centers be steadily improved, the PUE be gradually reduced, and the utilization rate of renewable energy be gradually increased in view of the high energy consumption of data centers. This time, the East-West Computing requires that the PUE of the Zhangjiakou, Shaoguan, Yangtze River Delta, Wuhu, Tianfu, and Chongqing clusters be below 1.25, and the PUE of the Linger, Gui'an, Zhongwei, and Qingyang clusters be below 1.2.

Building data centers is a trend and an opportunity, but both new and old data centers have high PUE requirements, which is a big challenge for the green reform of data centers. In foreign countries, the PUE value of advanced data centers is less than 2. The PUE value of domestic data centers is between 2-3, which is twice the average value of advanced data centers worldwide.

Most of the old data centers that still exist in China are built by major enterprises to meet their own business needs. In summary, these data centers are mainly fragmented and extensively built. The data centers are large in scale, with a large number of servers, storage devices and switches. The energy consumption of the data centers themselves is large, and the infrastructure such as computer rooms and air conditioning is old. The energy consumption of data centers has always been high. This has also made data centers criticized by the industry for a long time, which has directly affected the healthy development of data centers.

Newly built data centers face similar problems. The data center itself consumes a lot of energy. The corresponding technologies for reducing energy consumption are still in the growth stage, with high costs and unstable effects. Under the requirements of the dual-carbon strategy, the green PUE value of the data center of East West Computing is less than 1.3, which is a big challenge for IDC manufacturers. How to reduce the energy consumption of the data center? Let the PUE value approach 1? New technologies and solutions are beginning to emerge.

Towards dual carbon: IDC green reform measures

According to research and statistics, the energy consumption of data centers mainly includes IT equipment, refrigeration systems, power supply and distribution systems, lighting systems and other facilities, such as security equipment, sensors and management systems of related data center buildings. Overall, the power consumption of IT equipment systems composed of servers, storage and network communication equipment accounts for about 45% of the total power consumption of data centers, the power consumption of air conditioning and refrigeration systems accounts for about 40% of the total power consumption of data centers, and power supplies and other equipment account for 10% to 15%.

If we use the low PUE indicator to measure data centers, excellent low-energy data centers have high requirements for reducing energy consumption throughout their life cycle, from planning and design to procurement and implementation to operation, maintenance and verification. For low-PUE data centers, it is necessary to embed innovative technologies and services in these links to reduce the PUE value of the data center.

1. Reduction of power consumption of IT equipment. The industry mainly reduces power consumption from the software and hardware level of IT equipment. In terms of IT infrastructure, overall optimization is carried out from application optimization, architecture planning/optimization, and product selection to balance power reduction and efficiency. For example, AI technology is used to perform time-sharing scheduling of data, realize intelligent prediction, reasonably expand and shrink the capacity of server equipment, optimize the allocation of computing resources, and improve server utilization.

2. The power consumption of the refrigeration system is reduced. Traditional air cooling technology is gradually being replaced by liquid cooling technology, and the cooling effect of liquid cooling technology is almost twice as good as traditional air cooling. At present, technologies such as plate liquid cooling and immersion liquid cooling are gradually being used. The plate liquid cooling technology requires little modification, and the layout is basically the same as that of an ordinary computer room. Immersion liquid cooling can provide a cooling technology design that combines "liquid cooling + air cooling", and can carry out differentiated design of core module components in a targeted manner. Waste heat recovery around liquid cooling, such as heating, secondary refrigeration, power generation and other industries are also becoming a research trend and hot spot.

3. Reduce power consumption of construction and operation and maintenance systems. At the beginning of data center construction, low PUE planning and design are carried out, starting from comprehensive site selection, low-energy cabinets, modular/micro-modules, and operation and maintenance management to balance the relationship between power reduction and cost; in terms of operation and maintenance management, through refined monitoring platforms, reasonable evaluation of resource applications, etc., to detect resource utilization to dynamically adjust resource allocation, shut down unnecessary equipment during low-energy consumption periods and other strategies to balance power reduction and efficiency issues.

We can find that the green energy consumption reduction of data centers starts from planning and construction, including the green design of power supply systems, air-conditioning systems, HVAC systems, and the application of liquid cooling technology in refrigeration systems; then to the IT equipment level, the selection of IT equipment such as gateways and servers, network construction, and intelligent energy-saving optimization of the application process; in operation and maintenance management, it involves the monitoring of IT equipment and platforms, applications, and businesses.

The measurement of the PUE index energy consumption of a data center is a systematic project. In these key dimensions, every item must be perfect, especially for newly built data centers, otherwise they will be shut down if the PUE value does not meet the standard. For IDC manufacturers, reducing energy consumption and improving energy efficiency are the indicators they care about most.

Competitive trump card: one-stop full life service

How new and old data centers adapt to high PUE value requirements is the core business concern of IDC manufacturers and also their key development and innovation target.

The content of different stages of data center construction, operation and maintenance, and services are complex and involve complicated professional fields, such as the supporting civil engineering of the computer room in the building system construction, the power supply, refrigeration, cabinets, wiring, etc. of the physical infrastructure of the data center, the server operating system, network equipment, software and hardware platform, etc. Therefore, the role of data center service providers is also relatively scattered, providing differentiated services at different stages of data center construction and operation.

In the data center industry chain, there are three service providers: infrastructure, IDC hosting, and IDC services. The upstream includes companies that provide IT equipment servers, software and hardware facilities, as well as some IDC manufacturers that provide supporting equipment such as network communications, power supplies, racks, and heat dissipation. Companies such as Huawei and Tsinghua Unigroup H3C.

The midstream is the IDC service and solution provider. The market is dominated by the three major operators, coexisting and developing with third-party IDC companies and cloud service providers, mainly including GDS, 21Vianet and other manufacturers; the downstream is the demand side of data centers, mainly cloud computing manufacturers of major Internet companies, such as Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, Huawei Cloud, etc.

The technology circles we are familiar with mainly play the role of upstream and downstream participants in the data center market. The upstream IDC vendors of data centers mostly exist as single-point service roles, providing some services in data center construction and operation and maintenance. For example, consulting services for data center construction, refrigeration system construction, power system, IT software and hardware equipment services, etc.

Now more and more IDC manufacturers in the industry are beginning to focus on technology and modular solutions, playing the "trump card" of one-stop service data center construction. One-stop services include services in the entire life cycle of data centers, including infrastructure construction, operation and maintenance, and management, such as infrastructure construction, IT equipment hardware and software, low-energy cabinets, network gateway services, refrigeration systems, platform operation and maintenance system services, etc.

In the IDC industry, the number of vendors claiming to provide one-stop services has begun to increase. After all, scattered services in data centers are only a small part of the industry. One-stop services mean a package of solutions, which have huge commercial value, especially in the future operation of data centers. This is the blue ocean and focus of competition for vendors in the IDC market in the future, and it is also the reason why IDC vendors such as Huawei and H3C focus on construction and investment.

In general, one-stop services require high technology and capabilities from manufacturers, and only a few manufacturers in the industry have one-stop full-life service capabilities. In the construction and operation of data centers, there are many sub-fields involved. In the long industrial chain, there are all-round players and specialized players. Everyone plays to their strengths. The key to staying at the table for a long time is to create powerful tools or energy-efficient solutions.

In the era of intelligence, data centers of all sizes across the country have countless small and trivial needs, which require all players in the industry to play their strengths. The IDC industry has a huge cake, and it requires the joint efforts of multiple parties to deepen green reforms. This development opportunity is equal for all participants.

IDC service providers' innovations and changes in data centers continue to empower energy-intensive data centers with more green services and operation and maintenance capabilities, accelerating data centers towards an efficient, clean, intensive and sustainable green path. This not only supports the greening of our digital life, but also helps to quickly achieve the dual carbon goals.