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Data Centre Power Rising
by John Herbert | Director | 4 April 2008
This week the news from a recent uptime institute (www.uptime.org) survey makes grim reading.
Following the now infamous EPA report, which highlighted the data centre facilities as a power hungry target, and the increasing industry drive for more energy efficient data centres, this new survey reveals that the electrical power consumption for data centre facilities still continues to climb.
And importantly, the rate of increase exceeds that predicted in the EPA report. What does that mean for Asia? Typically trends in the USA and Europe are later reflected here in Asia, and although the provision of local DC facilities has not reached the same density as elsewhere, we must anticipate continued growth in hardware and software needs driving further facility expansion.
As both China and India continued to develop their, data centre demand and capacity will dramatically increase. But will they learn and avoid the mistakes of the past? Will we build leaner facilities today to meet the needs of tomorrow that is the key question.
In the major Asian cities, with some of the most expensive real estate on the planet, physical expansion is an expensive proposition. Therefore, the demand for increasing density, or so called high density servers is the likely result.
In China and India the longstanding electrical utility shortfall remains a challenge. New generation capacity in China is increasing, at a rate of approximately one new plant brought on line every week, and the total will soon surpass USA. However, with the economy GDP expected to expanding at approximately eight (8%) percent on average, the new capacity hardly meets the current demand, with no spare capacity for events such as the recent storms in northern china that left millions without electricity for weeks.
The EPA report only highlighted the problem for the public, in a nutshell data centres have, and will consume vast amounts of power. These facilities also have opportunities for "greening" and energy efficiency improvements to lower both the power consumption and their carbon footprint.
Certainly an interesting future lays ahead, will China and India learn
from overseas experience and creating a path towards lean data centre
facilities that will serve the needs of today and tomorrow?
Further Information
If you need any further information regarding Kelcroft's datacentre consultancy solutions, including data centre, planning, design, peer review, annual auditing, due diligence and thermal analysis services contact the experts, call John Herbert at our Hong Kong office, the telephone number is (852) 2335 9830, the fax number is (852) 2335 9862, or simply email us.