Data Center Trends & Products to Look Out For in 2017
It’s crucial for data center managers to follow the latest trends as well as research upcoming products that have the potential to improve operations within their facility. We’ve looked at two key data center trends and products that every data center manager should consider as we approach 2017.
Products
▶︎ Modular power skids
A modular approach when designing your data center provides the opportunity for scalability and expansion when customer demands require. Rather than a large initial investment, costs can be spread out over time, allowing your data center to grow in accordance with the demand from the business environment. There are various power skid options available, either individual skids which can hold a complete system or multiple skids joined together to form a larger module. These modular power skids are constructed off-site in a fabrication facility, before they are deployed in the data center, greatly speeding up the project timescale. In comparison to the older manufacturing process in data centers, the skidded systems offer a valuable solution in terms of better space utilization and quality management.
▶︎ Open channel busway systems
Increasing power distribution demands is a recurrent issue for efficient data center management. Facility managers are seeking a method to move away from the traditional under floor wiring and instead run the power cabling overhead. An open channel busway systems is an effective solution, with the option to insert tap off boxes at any point along the bar and not just at fixed insertion points. This eliminates the need to leave space between the tap offs, offering much greater flexibility than regular busway systems. Additionally, open channel busway systems can eliminate the fluctuation of high density loads associated with traditional power whips.
Trends
▶︎ Scalable data centers
In today’s fast moving business environment, scalability has never been so important, the demand for power capacity is growing exponentially and data centers must be equipped to cope with this demand. Not only should data centers be able to grow with the rising computing demand, they must to be able to expand quickly and in an economically sustainable way!
It is difficult for data centers to predict the future requirements of customers, which makes the capacity to promptly increase or decrease density a priority. A scalable data center is one that can increase and decrease power density in line with clients’ demands. Scalable data centers can deploy new equipment and expand the data center footprint within months.
▶︎ Maximizing power usage within the white space
While power protection schemes and the placement of UPSs near servers and equipment ensured smooth and secure operations within the data center, their restriction to be in the grey space has proved to be a hindrance. Due to their cooling requirements and size constraints, it wasn’t an option for them to be situated elsewhere. This has changed recently however, and modern UPSs can now be placed in the data center white space. This provides huge benefits to data center managers, who have experienced large growth rates, surpassing their current infrastructure capacity.
There are some aspects to consider before pursuing the optimization of your data center whitespace:
- Evaluate exactly what changes are necessary to consolidate equipment and create extra capacity.
- To optimize cooling efforts, it’s advisable to separate the hot air IT equipment from the cooling air.
- Installation of a DCIM solution can facilitate data center managers in their efforts to control capacity changes.
Remaining aware of data center trends and products can help managers get ahead of their competition. As we near 2017, we have predicted a large focus on scalability and modularity and evaluated two products that will facilitate these approaches to data center management.
