A data center is a treasury, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems.
Since IT operations are crucial for business continuity, it generally includes redundant or backup components and infrastructure for power supply, data communication connections, environmental controls (e.g., air conditioning, fire suppression), and various security devices. A large data center is an industrial-scale operation using as much electricity as a medium town. Estimated global data center electricity consumption in 2022 was 240–340 Watt, or roughly 1–1.3% of global electricity demand. This excludes energy used for cryptocurrency mining, which was estimated to be around 110 TWh in 2022, or another 0.4% of global electricity demand. The IEA projects that data center electric use could double between 2022 and 2026. High demand for electricity from data centers, including by cryptomining and artificial intelligence, has also increased strain on local electric grids and increased electricity prices in some markets.
Data centers can vary widely in terms of size, power requirements, redundancy, and overall structure. Four common categories used to segment types of data centers are onsite data centers, colocation facilities, hyperscale data centers, and edge data centers. In particular, colocation centers often host private peering connections between their customers, internet transit providers, cloud providers, for connecting customers together Internet exchange points, and landing points and terminal equipment for fiber optic submarine communication cables, connecting the internet.
During the microcomputer industry boom of the 1980s, users started to deploy computers everywhere, in many cases with little or no care about operating requirements. However, as IT operations started to grow in complexity, organizations grew aware of the need to control IT resources. The availability of inexpensive networking equipment, coupled with new standards for the network structured cabling, made it possible to use a hierarchical design that put the servers in a specific room inside the company. The use of the term data center, as applied to specially designed computer rooms, started to gain popular recognition about this time.In the 1990s, network-connected (servers) running without input or display devices were housed in the old computer rooms. These new "data centers" or "server rooms" were built within company walls, co-located with low-cost networking equipment.
A boom of data centers came during the dot-com bubble of 1997–2000.There was considerable construction of data centers during the early 2000s, in the Dot-com bubble. Company needed fast Internet connectivity and non-stop operation to deploy systems and to establish a presence on the Internet. Installing such equipment was not viable for many smaller companies. Many companies started building very large facilities, called internet data centers (IDCs), which provide enhanced capabilities, such as crossover backup: "If a Bell Atlantic line is cut, we can transfer them to ... to minimize the time of outage."
The term cloud data centers (CDCs) has been used. Increasingly, the division of these terms has almost disappeared and they are being integrated into the term data center.
The global data center market saw steady growth in the 2010s, with a notable acceleration in the latter half of the decade. According to Gartner, worldwide data center infrastructure spending reached $200 billion in 2021, representing a 6% increase from 2020 despite the economic challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The latter part of the 2010s and early 2020s saw a significant shift towards AI and machine learning applications, generating a global boom for more powerful and efficient data center infrastructure. As of March 2021, global data creation was projected to grow to more than 180 zettabytes by 2025, up from 64.2 zettabytes in 2020.
The United States is currently the foremost leader in data center infrastructure, hosting 5,381 data centers as of March 2024, the highest number of any country worldwide. According to global consultancy McKinsey & Co., U.S. market demand is expected to double to 35 gigawatts (GW) by 2030, up from 17 GW in 2022. As of 2023, the U.S. accounts for roughly 40 percent of the global market.
A study published by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) in May 2024 estimates U.S. data center power consumption could range from 4.6% to 9.1% of the country's generation by 2030. As of 2023, about 80% of U.S. data center load was concentrated in 15 states, led by Virginia and Texas.
Information security is also a concern, and for this reason, a data center has to offer a secure environment that minimizes the chances of a security breach. A data center must, therefore, keep high standards for assuring the integrity and functionality of its hosted computer environment.
Industry research company International Data Corporation (IDC) puts the average age of a data center at nine years old. Gartner, another research company, says data centers older than seven years are obsolete. The growth in data (163 zettabytes by 2025) is one factor driving the need for data centers to modernize.
Focus on modernization is not new: concern about obsolete equipment was decried in 2007, and in 2011 Uptime Institute was concerned about the age of the equipment therein.In May 2011, data center research organization Uptime Institute reported that 36 percent of the large companies it surveyed expect to exhaust IT capacity within the next 18 months. By 2018 concern had shifted once again, this time to the age of the staff: "data center staff are aging faster than the equipment."
Telcordia GR-3160, NEBS Requirements for Telecommunications Data Center Equipment and Spaces, provides guidelines for data center spaces within telecommunications networks, and environmental requirements for the equipment intended for installation in those spaces. These criteria were developed jointly by Telcordia and industry representatives. They may be applied to data center spaces housing data processing or Information Technology (IT) equipment. The equipment may be used to:
Data center consolidation consists in reducing the number of data centersand avoiding server sprawl (both physical and virtual), often includes replacing aging data center equipment. Likewise, this process is aided by standardization which makes these systems follow a uniform set of configurations in order to simplify and improve efficiency. Virtualization, on the other hand, lowers capital, operational expenses, and reduces energy consumption. Virtualized desktops can be hosted in data centers and rented out on a subscription basis. Investment bank Lazard Capital Markets estimated that in 2008, 48 percent of enterprise operations will be virtualized by 2012. Gartner views virtualization as a catalyst for modernization. Automating tasks such as provisioning, configuration, patching, release management, and compliance are other ways in which data centers can be upgraded.These changes are needed not just when facing fewer skilled IT workers. Lastly, security initiatives integrates the protection of virtual systems with existing security of physical infrastructures.
The first raised floor computer room was made by IBM in 1956, and they have "been around since the 1960s"; it was during the 1970s that it became more common for computer centers to thereby allow cool air to circulate more efficiently.
The first purpose of the raised floor was to allow access for wiring.
OSHA regulations require monitoring of noise levels inside data centers if noise exceeds 85 decibels. The average noise level in server areas of a data center may reach as high as 92-96 dB(A).
Residents living near data centers have described the sound as "a high-pitched whirring noise 24/7", saying "It's like being on a Airport apron with an airplane engine running constantly ... Except that the airplane keeps idling and never leaves."
External sources of noise include HVAC equipment and energy generators.
Local building codes may govern the minimum ceiling heights and other parameters. Some of the considerations in the design of data centers are:
A modular data center may consist of data center equipment contained within shipping containers or similar portable containers. Components of the data center can be prefabricated and standardized which facilitates moving if needed.
To prevent single points of failure, all elements of the electrical systems, including backup systems, are typically given redundant copies, and critical servers are connected to both the A-side and B-side power feeds. This arrangement is often made to achieve N+1 redundancy in the systems. Static transfer switches are sometimes used to ensure instantaneous switchover from one supply to the other in the event of a power failure.
Maintaining suitable temperature and humidity levels is critical to preventing equipment damage caused by overheating. Overheating can cause components, usually the silicon or copper of the wires or circuits to melt, causing connections to loosen, causing fire hazards. Typical control methods include:
Humidity control not only prevents moisture-related issues: importantly, excess humidity can cause dust to adhere more readily to fan blades and heat sinks, impeding air cooling leading to higher temperatures.
Alternatively, a range of underfloor panels can create efficient cold air pathways directed to the raised-floor vented tiles. Either the cold aisle or the hot aisle can be contained. Hot-Aisle vs. Cold-Aisle Containment for Data Centers, John Niemann, Kevin Brown, and Victor Avelar, APC by Schneider Electric White Paper 135, Revision 1
Another option is fitting cabinets with vertical exhaust duct . Hot exhaust pipes/vents/ducts can direct the air into a Plenum space above a Dropped ceiling and back to the cooling units or to outside vents. With this configuration, traditional hot/cold aisle configuration is not a requirement.
Although the main room usually does not allow Wet Pipe-based Systems due to the fragile nature of Circuit-boards, there still exist systems that can be used in the rest of the facility or in cold/hot aisle air circulation systems that are , such as:
Logging access is required by some data protection regulations; some organizations tightly link this to access control systems. Multiple log entries can occur at the main entrance, entrances to internal rooms, and at equipment cabinets. Access control at cabinets can be integrated with intelligent power distribution units, so that locks are networked through the same appliance.
PUE measures the percentage of power used by overhead devices (cooling, lighting, etc.). The average USA data center has a PUE of 2.0, meaning two watts of total power (overhead + IT equipment) for every watt delivered to IT equipment. State-of-the-art data centers are estimated to have a PUE of roughly 1.2. Google publishes quarterly efficiency metrics from its data centers in operation. PUEs of as low as 1.01 have been achieved with two phase immersion cooling.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has an Energy Star rating for standalone or large data centers. To qualify for the ecolabel, a data center must be within the top quartile in energy efficiency of all reported facilities.Commentary on introduction of Energy Star for Data Centers The Energy Efficiency Improvement Act of 2015 (United States) requires federal facilities—including data centers—to operate more efficiently. California's Title 24 (2014) of the California Code of Regulations mandates that every newly constructed data center must have some form of airflow containment in place to optimize energy efficiency.
The European Union also has a similar initiative: EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres.
In 2011, server racks in data centers were designed for more than 25 kW and the typical server was estimated to waste about 30% of the electricity it consumed. The energy demand for information storage systems is also rising. A high-availability data center is estimated to have a 1 megawatt (MW) demand and consume $20,000,000 in electricity over its lifetime, with cooling representing 35% to 45% of the data center's total cost of ownership. Calculations show that in two years, the cost of powering and cooling a server could be equal to the cost of purchasing the server hardware. Research in 2018 has shown that a substantial amount of energy could still be conserved by optimizing IT refresh rates and increasing server utilization. Research for optimizing task scheduling is also underway, with researchers looking to implement energy-efficient scheduling algorithms that could reduce energy consumption by anywhere between 6% to 44%.
In 2011, Facebook, Rackspace and others founded the Open Compute Project (OCP) to develop and publish open standards for greener data center computing technologies. As part of the project, Facebook published the designs of its server, which it had built for its first dedicated data center in Prineville. Making servers taller left space for more effective heat sinks and enabled the use of fans that moved more air with less energy. By not buying commercial off-the-shelf servers, energy consumption due to unnecessary expansion slots on the motherboard and unneeded components, such as a graphics card, was also saved. In 2016, Google joined the project and published the designs of its 48V DC shallow data center rack. This design had long been part of Google data centers. By eliminating the multiple usually deployed in data centers, Google had achieved a 30% increase in energy efficiency. In 2017, sales for data center hardware built to OCP designs topped $1.2 billion and are expected to reach $6 billion by 2021.
A power and cooling analysis, also referred to as a thermal assessment, measures the relative temperatures in specific areas as well as the capacity of the cooling systems to handle specific ambient temperatures. A power and cooling analysis can help to identify hot spots, over-cooled areas that can handle greater power use density, the breakpoint of equipment loading, the effectiveness of a raised-floor strategy, and optimal equipment positioning (such as AC units) to balance temperatures across the data center. Power cooling density is a measure of how much square footage the center can cool at maximum capacity. The cooling of data centers is the second largest power consumer after servers. The cooling energy varies from 10% of the total energy consumption in the most efficient data centers and goes up to 45% in standard air-cooled data centers.
This information can help to identify optimal positioning of data center equipment. For example, critical servers might be placed in a cool zone that is serviced by redundant AC units.
Cooling cost reduction through natural means includes location decisions: When the focus is avoiding good fiber connectivity, power grid connections, and people concentrations to manage the equipment, a data center can be miles away from the users. Mass data centers like Google or Facebook don't need to be near population centers. Arctic locations that can use outside air, which provides cooling, are becoming more popular.
Renewable electricity sources are another plus. Thus countries with favorable conditions, such as Canada, Canada Called Prime Real Estate for Massive Data Computers - Globe & Mail Retrieved June 29, 2011. Finland, Finland - First Choice for Siting Your Cloud Computing Data Center.. Retrieved 4 August 2010. Sweden, Norway, In a world of rapidly increasing carbon emissions from the ICT industry, Norway offers a sustainable solution Retrieved 1 March 2016. and Switzerland Swiss Carbon-Neutral Servers Hit the Cloud. . Retrieved 4 August 2010. are trying to attract cloud computing data centers.
Singapore lifted a three-year ban on new data centers in April 2022. A major data center hub for the Asia-Pacific region, Singapore lifted its moratorium on new data center projects in 2022, granting 4 new projects, but rejecting more than 16 data center applications from over 20 new data centers applications received. Singapore's new data centers shall meet very strict green technology criteria including "Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE) of 2.0/MWh, Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of less than 1.3, and have a "Platinum certification under Singapore's BCA-IMDA Green Mark for New Data Centre" criteria that clearly addressed decarbonization and use of hydrogen cells or solar panels.
An alternative to heat pumps is the adoption of liquid cooling throughout a data center. Different liquid cooling techniques are mixed and matched to allow for a fully liquid-cooled infrastructure that captures all heat with water. Different liquid technologies are categorized in 3 main groups, indirect liquid cooling (water-cooled racks), direct liquid cooling (direct-to-chip cooling) and total liquid cooling (complete immersion in liquid, see server immersion cooling). This combination of technologies allows the creation of a thermal cascade as part of temperature chaining scenarios to create high-temperature water outputs from the data center.
On-site water use refers to the direct water consumed by the data center for the cooling of it's equipment. Water is used specifically for space humidification (adds moisture to the air), evaporative cooling systems (air is cooled before entering server rooms), and cooling towers (water is used to remove heat from the facility). All of which consume a vast amount of clean water.
Off-site is the indirect water usage from the electricity generated in data centers. It is estimated that 56% of U.S data centers' electricity comes from fossil fuels, this process require water to operate the power plants and produce energy.
Since 2022, more than two-thirds of new data centers have been built in Water scarcity, including Texas, Arizona, Saudi Arabia, and India, where freshwater scarcity is already a critical issue. The global water footprint of data centers is estimated at annually, a figure projected to double by 2030 due to increasing AI demand.
In regions like Aragon, Spain, Amazon's planned data centers are licensed to withdraw of water per year, sparking conflicts with farmers who rely on the same dwindling supplies. Similar tensions have arisen in Chile, the Netherlands, and Uruguay, where communities protest the diversion of water for tech infrastructure.
Tech companies, including Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, have pledged to become "Water positivity" by 2030, aiming to replenish more water than they consume. However, critics argue that such commitments often rely on water offsetting, which does not address acute local shortages.
With at least 59 additional data centers planned for water-stressed U.S. regions by 2028, and AI's projected global water demand reaching by 2027, experts warn of an unsustainable trajectory. As Arizona State University water policy expert Kathryn Sorensen asked: "Is the increase in tax revenue and the relatively paltry number of jobs worth the water?"
Side benefits include
Some of the servers at the data center are used for running the basic internet and intranet services needed by internal users in the organization, e.g., e-mail servers, , and DNS servers.
Network security elements are also usually deployed: firewalls, VPN gateways, intrusion detection systems, and so on. Also common are monitoring systems for the network and some of the applications. Additional off-site monitoring systems are also typical, in case of a failure of communications inside the data center.
Onsite is traditional, and one of its major advantages is immediate availability.
Challenges include temperature fluctuations, , and .
Requirements for modern data centers
Meeting standards for data centers
Data center transformation
Raised floor
Lights out
Noise levels
Data center design
Design criteria and trade-offs
High availability
Modularity and flexibility
Electrical power
Low-voltage cable routing
Airflow and environmental control
Aisle containment
Fire protection
However, there also exist other means to put out fires, especially in Server farm, usually using Gaseous fire suppression, of which Halon gas was the most popular, until the negative effects of producing and using it were discovered.[2]
Security
Energy use
Greenhouse gas emissions
Energy efficiency and overhead
Energy use analysis and projects
Power and cooling analysis
Energy efficiency analysis
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis
Thermal zone mapping
Green data centers
Direct current data centers
Energy reuse
Impact on electricity prices
Water consumption and environmental impact
Dynamic infrastructure
Network infrastructure
Software/data backup
Offsite backup storage
Modular data center
Micro data center
Data centers in space
See also
Notes
External links
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