Enterprise users avoid entering into large data center construction error

Cloud computing boom in the domestic provinces and cities continue to ferment. Not only the one or two-line cities, and even three or four-tier cities have expressed their enthusiasm for building cloud computing, betting heavily. However, how can large data centers be designed to be more reasonable, and how can the construction cycle be faster and more secure? These are all new subjects for both the design unit and the construction units. In the one-sided pursuit of construction speed and scale, some data centers in the construction of a two-point misreading:

One, excessively value the purchase cost

Now, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and other foreign companies to create new data centers, not only in the location of the full effort to reduce energy expenditure, but also in the ventilation and cooling and other energy-consuming methods and equipment selection on the other, exhausted all means to reduce electricity costs. According to experts, the data center initial investment accounted for only 18% of the overall investment, energy has gone beyond the procurement costs, has become a major focus of the company.

A preliminary estimate of the power consumed by a Google search can be as good as 11 watts of energy-saving light for 15 minutes to one hours, and Google's 2010-year power consumption of 2.26 million MW (equivalent to 2.26 billion degrees), about 210,000 U.S. households a year of electricity consumption. According to the New York Times, this amounts to about one-fourth per cent of the production of a nuclear power plant. Google has taken a number of steps to develop green energy, including the development of different wind and solar projects. Some experts say energy costs have gone beyond the cost of procurement to become a huge expense for data center operations.

In addition, from the data center of Civil Engineering Cost analysis, the traditional data center of the computer room's load-bearing capacity, tightness, insulation, earthquake resistance and so on very high requirements, so the construction cost is relatively high. Whether the container-type data center or indoor modular data center, they have no special requirements for civil construction, can be directly deployed, so the cost of civil construction is not high. A Microsoft statistic says it usually takes $500 million to build a traditional data center, and only 250 million dollars to build a modular datacenter. From the cost of supporting services related to the data center, the design cost of the data center accounts for the 3%~5% of the total cost of the data center construction, while the cost of the total electromechanical package, IT General package, project planning and supervision is the 5%~10% of the total cost. Modular Data center solutions are pre-installed in the factory, As a result, data center design, engineering management and total package costs have been reduced. This is also the main reason for the growing popularity of modular data centers.

Based on energy costs and civil cost considerations, including Yahoo, Microsoft and other companies began to discard higher power consumption, the area of the larger lead-acid battery ups, the use of efficient energy-saving and small footprint of the flywheel ups, the manufacturer of active power company Greater China Region President Wang Huan said "in China, Modular data centers can save at least 30% of the cost of traditional data centers. ”

Second, the number of maintenance staff is harmless

In order to ensure the normal operation of room equipment, a large number of maintenance personnel to the computer room environment support system, monitoring equipment, mainframe equipment, regular testing, maintenance and maintenance, to ensure the stability of equipment in the room, through maintenance and prolong the life cycle of equipment, reduce failure rate. In the past, a large data center often has several battery rooms, workers need to regularly charge and discharge lead batteries and various checks to ensure the normal start-up of UPS. Traditional UPS power supply manufacturers usually use "maintenance-free lead-acid batteries" for energy storage. This so-called "maintenance-free" battery actually requires at least two inspections per year to ensure that they are non-corrosive, work well and have a tight connection between single batteries. At the same time, in order to protect the reliability of the battery, the only way is to monitor the battery. However, each test battery will reduce its capacity and shorten its service life. Monitoring, whether off-line or online mode, must be set up standby power supply as a precautionary measure to ensure safety, however, the detection because of the number of batteries, the discharge time is long, after discharge and timely charging, there are many security risks.

Using flywheel ups, because the flywheel itself is mechanical storage, can be unlimited charge and discharge, maintenance cycle of 4 years, just replace the bearing can be, almost no maintenance personnel. Some people may say, China's labor cost is so low, how many maintenance personnel? In fact, people are the most uncontrollable factor, the more people involved, the greater the probability of the vulnerability. For example, early Ford car for manual customization, although retain the personality, but lost the standard, after standardization, not only improve the security, the cost will be reduced. This is precisely the number of leading large data centers, maintenance staff a very few main reasons. There are only four maintenance staff in a large Facebook data center.

"A cloud computing data center usually includes thousands of modules, and if a traditional battery ups is used, the batteries distributed in all modules should be maintained and their workload is unthinkable." "While flywheel UPS is basically maintenance-free and can guarantee 7x24 hours of continuous work, it is clear that flywheel ups is more suitable for large data centers," said Wang Huan, president of the Active Power company in Greater China. Once the data center is over 10MW, it is almost impossible to choose lead-acid battery ups. On the one hand, it is too large, on the other hand, too much maintenance.

In addition, there are more redundancy in data center construction, the more expensive the better, the larger the scale the more competitive and so on misreading. Only by renewing the idea and understanding the customer's demand, can the data center get good economic benefit and keep growing safely and reliably.