EDITOR’S QUESTION
HOW CAN A DATA CENTRE’S
DESIGN CONTRIBUTE TO
OPTIMUM PERFORMANCE?
THERE IS
A HOST OF
TECHNOLOGIES
AVAILABLE
TO ENABLE
DATA-DRIVEN
DECISIONS
WHICH WILL
IMPROVE
THE DESIGN
OF THE DATA
CENTRE AND ITS
OPERATIONAL
PERFORMANCE.
here are a number of
T
elements that contribute
to a data centre’s
design, including
location, efficiency,
layout, mechanical
design, to name a few. All of these
factors contribute to its operability and
performance capability.
Mark Fenton, Product Manager at
Future Facilities, defines a data centre’s
performance as being a mixture of many
things and says that each business will
have different KPIs for their data centre.
“Whether the overarching goal is being
green and efficient, cramming as much
capacity as possible into the space, or to
be as resilient to failure as possible; the
key to achieving it is in the design and
redesign, of the data centre.
“The data centre is a complicated system
with many moving parts; power, cooling,
racks, IT, cabling and more. Usually, these
are independently designed, assembled
into one working system. Essentially, it
means we flip a switch and hope it will
work. However, it often doesn’t.”
Fenton went on to address the
independent research commissioned
by Future Facilities which found that
one third of data centres see their
facility’s temperature managed using
rule of thumb and that 40% then suffered
outages in their data centre due to
human error. “Data centre operators must
remember that when the parts of a data
centre are assembled, they will have a
significant impact on one another. This
can be no place for guesswork.
“For example, to have a well-designed
white space, but a poor infrastructure
layout on the roof will only result in bad
data centre performance. Equally, if you
design an efficient rooftop configuration
for the cooling infrastructure but don’t
consider the white space layout, the
end result is also likely to be poor
performance. Data centre operators need
to consider the complete solution. Luckily,
there is a host of technologies available
to enable data-driven decisions which will
improve the design of the data centre and
its operational performance. One such
technology is the digital twin. With this
physics-based simulation, operators can
prototype how those individual elements
will operate together and ensure that they
get a data centre that is more than the
sum of its parts.
“We know once you hand over the
keys, everything changes. Design
decisions are replaced with real living,
breathing equipment which may behave
completely differently to the original
specification. The digital twin can
help operators to smoothly transition
between the two and test out any
real deployments virtually before the
installation takes place. Having the
freedom to fail, learn and adjust plans
allows operators to find interesting,
innovative ways to improve cooling
and power, as well as turning wasted
capacity into higher reliability and
optimum performance.
“This process of finding the optimal
balance of saving energy and cost while
maximising performance saves money
both in designing and operating a data
centre. It also helps operators to reduce
the chances of downtime and manage
load variation. Ultimately, this enables them
and their engineers to configure the data
centre to whichever KPI the data centre
is aimed at. The resulting resilience and
optimum performance will keep customers
loyal and the business running at a profit
for the long-term,” said Fenton.
www.intelligentdatacentres.com Issue 19
29