The days of owning a giant data centre that you hope to grow into are over. Today’s data centre decisions pivot around managing energy efficiency and building in modularity that helps keep investments in pace with growth. Good data centre planning gives the organisation a clear path for growth and TEXPO has been showing customers how they can achieve that. In this exclusive interview with TEXPO’s CEO Dr. Sarfaraz Alam, we talk about the key trends shaping the future of the data centre.
Q: What is the major shift you see in today’s approach to building data centres?
We are seeing a major shift in today’s approach to building data centres as compared to say the year 2000. Customers are also making decisions that are based on design and how it can help them optimise operational costs during the lifetime of the data centre. In TEXPO’s view, maximising performance, achieving energy efficiency, building modularity and flexibility are key drivers. In summary some of the major customer requirements today with regard to data centres include:
- Optimising the performance of their data centres
- Build data centres with infrastructure in a portable and modular format
- Ensure energy efficient design with efficient cooling and operating environment
- Strong and complete control of their network and physical infrastructure
Q: What are some of the key facts that customers need to keep in mind while investing in building and expending their data centres?
In general, there are four key aspects that we have to keep in mind while going in for a data centre. I would like to refer to it more as a clear understanding of what aspects can affect the success of the initiative and they are as follows:
- Understand that energy costs often outweigh capital investments: Running costs can easily outstrip what you invest in the original plan for the facility. The lesson here is to always build what you need and give room for further growth. Remember, most of the spending is on physical infrastructure. It’s not worth buying what you don’t need immediately.
- Be smart with your approach: The key to good data centres is by taking a modular approach that helps you grow and stack up infrastructure based on your needs. This approach helps keep the data centre at just the right size for you at any given point.
- Cooling needs to dovetail energy: Energy consumption means more heat, which means that you need to invest in proper cooling if you hope to get the most out of your investment. The size of the data centre will determine the type of cooling you require and you cannot have a one-size-fits-all approach. Technology used makes a big difference on the type of cooling options you will require and you need to keep an eye on the operational costs you will incur as well.
- Emerging technologies can offer value: Especially technologies like server virtualisation can offer a lot of benefits including better optimisation of resources and easing server management.
Q: How does TEXPO assist customers with their data centre needs?
TEXPO sees itself as an end-to-end partner for a full range of data centre solutions including developing ready to move-in dedicated data centres. We offer customers a breath of expertise that includes working with them to plan, design, engineer, construct, monitor and maintain data centres, computer rooms or server farms that integrate the best of breed critical infrastructure technologies.
We believe in delivering an always available, scalable and manageable data centre solution for customers. Some of the key services offered include:
- Complete data centre infrastructure build up in a portable and modular format
- Drafting open IT architecture models to enable installation and support of any rack-mounted IT equipment
- Physically securing and insulating containers in any location or environment
- Drawing up energy efficient designs with leading cooling technologies to ensure proper operating environment
- Complete IT service capabilities to help customers maintain a physically secure and stable environment
- Flexible design services to meet unique business requirements
Q: Let’s look at the aspect of designing the data centre itself. What in your opinion are key objectives to keep in mind?
One of the important things to consider is to look at what is wrong with data centres today? One of the major issues is that often older data centres are not designed for the power and cooling required for high-density servers currently being used. So planning proper facilities and the management of the data centre itself becomes critical.
It’s also important to ensure that you are not underestimating your power requirements, especially if IT is not paying the bills. Organisations also need to clearly define their objectives and set the baselines for any investment to build or upgrade their data centres. And like we always tell our customers, make sure that you have the right partner and the expertise to help you. So again in summary, your data centre design needs to look at the following key areas:
- Space Feasibility Analysis: which helps you understand the space requirements and focus on how you can optimise the infrastructure
- Monitoring Solutions: are critical when it comes to keeping full control of your infrastructure
- Operation / Maintenance Procedure Development: helps you ensure that your data centre is running to the plan
- Emergency Procedure / Contingency Plan Development: it’s critical to factor in emergencies and failures as part of business continuity planning
- Rebate Availability Analysis and Design: helps you track energy savings and apply business objectives to the data centre design
- Green Designs for Sustainability: facilitates more efficient energy savings and cost competitiveness, while contributing to being more environmentally friendly
Q: How critical is the data centre audit process? What are the steps involved?
It’s not just enough if you build. You need to make sure that what you built for delivers for your organisation. Data centre audit therefore is a critical aspect and TEXPO delivers a wide range of audit and certification services aimed at newly built facilities as well as existing data centre facilities. Our Auditing services ensure that data centre has been built according to the applicable standards and international best practices. We’ve seen that many data centre contractors claim that the facilities are built on standards such as ANSI/TIA-942, SS507 and ISO-24762 and audits need to ensure that this is the case.
At TEXPO, we have the knowledge to understand if your organisation evolution has caused your data centre facilities and operations to deviate from the industry standards and best practices. The audit practice is normally initiated with a complete “health check” of your data centre which gives you a fresh look from an expert and unbiased perspective. The steps followed include:
- Providing the information you need to form a plan of action that will ensure that your data centre meets your current needs and is ready to support your business as it moves forward
- Examining the current state of your facility’s Layer 1 physical infrastructure, including thermal management, cabling, pathways, cabinets, racks, and telecommunications bonding, evaluating their compliance with industry standards and best practices
- Recommending areas in need of remediation or further investigation to optimise your physical infrastructure to support your business goals
There are other assessments which TEXPO offers to ensure a complete and well-rounded auditing of any Data Centres including:
- Telecommunications bonding Assessment
- Thermal Analysis Featuring Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
- Energy Efficiency Assessment
- Cabling, Pathways and Rack Infrastructure Assessment
Q: Finally, could you give us your best practice tips for running an efficient data centre?
The fact is that today data centre facilities fail to meet the operational and capacity requirements of their initial design. New technologies such as blade servers also put greater pressure on power and cooling requirements which often push customers to consolidate their data centres, driven by the need for space maximisation and changes in the operational procedures. Thus, the overarching rule in data centre facilities is to design for flexibility and scalability. Here are some key best practices to keep in mind:
- Take a comprehensive view of location and site selection — consider utility infrastructure, labour and real estate markets in the decision criteria.
- Opt for industrial-type buildings.
- Avoid densely packing the racks, trade space for density and use spot cooling for hot spots.
- Evaluate the level of redundancy (tier level) and its cost with the cost of downtime.
- Build right-sized central plants and ventilation systems to operate efficiently both at inception and as the data centre load increases over time.
- Maintain improved air management, emphasising control and isolation of hot and cold air streams.
TEXPO Research Team
16th November 2011
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