New challenges in data centers: energy-saving technology as an important element

All along, the data center has been a little bit of the pipa half cover, not like cloud computing or large data such high-profile, once the debut will attract a lot of eyeballs, causing a sensation. However, both cloud computing technology and large data applications require a huge data center to support them. With the rapid development of the Internet of things and the application of mobile web, the large-scale increase of business such as electronic commerce and video has brought more sustainable demand and more arduous task to the data center.

Pull back to October 21, 2013, China's leading domestic level of large-scale cloud computing data center, cloud computing Research and Development application demonstration base-Chinese telecom cloud Guizhou Information Park in Guiyang officially started construction. In this period covers an area of 500 acres, 4 billion yuan industrial park will accommodate 8 data centers, a power center, 2 supporting centers, to provide 120,000 server mass storage capacity. The construction of Guizhou Information Park marks the development of China's data center industry, in the near future, such large data centers will follow, however, the construction of large data centers, but also with the arrival of high energy consumption problems. More than 50% of the energy consumed by data centers is used in IT equipment, refrigeration systems and power distribution system. Therefore, the energy-saving technology of data center becomes the important element of core competitiveness of data center. Therefore, the green and efficient data center is the trend of the general but not hype.

Metrics for data centers

Energy-related costs account for about 12% of total data center spending and are among the fastest growing in the data center, according to Gartner's authoritative analyst. China's data center energy consumption is also growing rapidly, significantly higher than the world average, China's energy consumption per unit of GDP is 2.2 times times that of developed countries. The Institute of Communications Standards of the Ministry of Information Technology, in August 2011, "13th China Association for Science and Technology Forum Green IT and Energy Efficiency Communications Forum" said that the current Chinese data center average PUE value between 2.2 to 3.0, and the actual energy consumption may be much higher than this figure. And with the size and volume of data centers increasing, the power consumption will undoubtedly increase gradually. The high energy consumption of the data center not only brings the heavy burden to the enterprise, but also causes the huge waste of the whole society. Therefore, in the Twelve-Five plan, the energy management is written into it, the energy consumption of the unit GDP is reduced by 16%, the pue of the Chinese data center should be reduced by 8%, and the Pue of cloud computing data center should not be higher than 1.5. Green and efficient data centers are desperately needed.

How do you describe the energy consumption of the datacenter? Compared to a standard office of the same size, the data center consumes about 25 times to 30 times times the electricity. Because of this, many of the corporate CIOs interviewed by reporters described energy consumption as a "big trouble". For enterprises, the cost of energy consumption in large data centers has become the second largest in the enterprise's increasingly heavy it cost, which will have a big impact on the expansion of the data center. In the face of limited it cost, good enterprise CIO, means to keep business sustainable while at the same time, save a lot of money and a lot of time for the enterprise, not only to avoid risk, but also to achieve higher operational efficiency and energy efficiency, smooth and easy data center deployment, achieve data center high reliability, High availability and scalability are a powerful guarantee for the CIO's work.

Adopt the most efficient, the most reliable components of the Schneider Electric Infineon Data Center solution is a completely according to the overall system design solutions, firmly grasp customer demand, the use of systematic integration, modular data center to build ideas, speed up the deployment of data center solutions, reduce human and material costs, And you can implement the data center expansion on demand. Infineon's data center Operations Management system can help enterprise IT managers to specify it-related business decisions in a matter of minutes, without having to spend a few more months, the information about redundancy, efficiency, cost, and density can be fingered to ensure that it deployments are fully met and support business development. Infineon's row-level refrigeration and Airflow organization management system can make the data center more adaptable to the dynamic load demand of cloud computing and large data times, and make the energy consumption level of the whole data center greatly optimized.

The concept of prefabricated modular data centers is like playing high, using the same basic component module to build objects of different shapes and sizes. The prefabricated modular data center is the assembly of prefabricated data center parts, which are produced in advance and have different types and sizes so that these prefabricated modules can adapt to different requirements. Prefabricated modular data centers are designed, built, integrated hardware and software systems, and then tested and validated by the original, and then easily and quickly deployed to the site, finally building new types of data centers to accommodate different voltages, load densities, and critical levels. The high sustainability of prefabricated modular data centers can provide a good guarantee of business continuity and flexibility.

Prefabricated modular data centers can have faster deployment speeds than traditional data centers speed up to 60%, Schneider Electric to ensure that from the orders to the delivery can be delivered in 12 weeks or less time, with the same or lower total initial investment, the maximum savings of 13%, and significantly reduce the compatibility problem; Easily implement partitioned deployments of different density meter availability within the same datacenter, support rebuilding, eliminate uncertainty, and have predictable, energy-efficient usage.

New challenges for data centers

The data center has been around for 10 years, Gartner reported, "the first two generations of data center design has been unable to meet current and future requirements, the new data center should not be a static structure, but a dynamic with the server and storage infrastructure changes in the continuous development of the machine." Future data centers should be "flexible, modular, and virtualized".

Today's data centers also face some challenges in infrastructure development. In the planning phase, because of the change in the cost overruns occur; In the design phase, there is always the question of "We have spent a lot of money and a few months to complete the proposal is not, and we have to spend another one months to revise"; at the construction stage, there will always be projects that cannot be delayed as scheduled. Actual construction and design are very different, delay more time, and in the implementation phase, there will always be "looking at the cabinet there is room, but can not install new IT equipment."

The traditional data center is built according to plan and design, emphasizing the maximum uptime, cost-effectiveness, energy efficiency and so on. But in the process of building the data center, it is found that in addition to these factors, the time limit of the construction facilities, the scalability of the data center is equally important.

During the decade of the Infineon Data Center solution, Schneider Electric to the Infineon solutions are also continuous improvement and innovation, in the integrated, modular, inter-row refrigeration, PDU configuration and software management and other aspects of continuous optimization, not only can greatly reduce investment risk, improve energy efficiency, It is also constantly shortening the implementation cycle of the data center from concept to design to installation, dramatically reducing complexity.

Schneider Electric also has a solid experience in the implementation of the prefabricated module data center, providing a complete set of prefabricated modules. Some challenging environments bring a lot of risk to the organization's data center deployments, with delays and budget overruns. In particular, some data centers built for specific purposes, because they can not be quickly and easily extended, often encounter water leakage, scale and other issues. The emergence of a prefabricated modular data center, can solve these problems well, compared to the traditional data center built by bricks and mortar, modular structure can quickly respond to changing needs, prefabricated facilities can better quality, budget and time control, increase the predictability of the data center. Infineon Data center solutions and prefabricated modular data center deployments allow Schneider Electric to ensure that both indoor and outdoor, it space and even the entire infrastructure can meet a variety of needs; they can be deployed individually or in combination, and can form a data center with buildings.

Fish and Bear's paw

Schneider Electric has been dedicated to energy management and is the thinking leader of the Green data center community. Faced with existing data center problems, enterprises should consider investment, sustainable investment ROI, on the other hand to consider the adaptability of business strategy. Schneider Electric proposes to change the way consulting, design, program, implement, operation, and optimize data centers. Need to include a full range of infrastructure and room space solutions, as well as a full lifecycle service from planning, construction, to operations.

Future data centers need to consider normality and contingency conflicts, but both have been hard to come by. In the normal situation, we consider the problem of energy efficiency, you can use sex, which is good for Infineon; prefabrication, the solution is the sustainability of the problem, that is, to ensure business continuity, to protect the flexibility of the business, both complement each other and achieve both. Schneider Electric puts customers ' needs first and actively seeks innovation to help enterprises move towards efficiency and improve business intelligence according to the needs of different enterprises. This is the simultaneous attack of Schneider Electric.