EDITOR ’ S QUESTION
HOW ARE DATA CENTRE LEADERS COMPETING WITH CLOUD OPERATORS IN ORDER TO APPEAL TO THEIR AUDIENCE AND REMAIN RELEVANT IN THE MARKET ?
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Technology industry hasn ’ t always had a great reputation when it comes to sustainability , however , things are much better these days and the industry has stepped up to play its part in protecting this fragile planet ,” said Andrew Brinded , SVP EMEA Sales , Nutanix .
“ But with cloud computing , the opportunity is there to take chunks out of the tech-related carbon footprint .”
Brinded says we can see many ways in which cloud is not just becoming the default deployment model for convenience , agility , value and scalability , but also the go-to model for the environment .
“ It ’ s certainly the case that data centres account for at least 1 – 2 % of global energy consumption and the forecasts suggest that this will multiply in the near future to perhaps 8 % by 2030 and 14 % by 2040 ,” Brinded continued .
“ That sort of growth would see IT surpassing even aviation ( in the postpandemic future when travel returns ), one of the current bogeymen of energy consumption .
“ That ’ s because cloud really fulfils a lot of the thinking about responsible ways to live and work . Cloud platforms are infinitely shareable , elastic and fit for repurposing .”
Brinded says that a cloud service provider plays host to the masses .
“ Cloud data centres aren ’ t just scaledup versions of traditional data centres ,” he said .
“ They benefit from the latest approaches to HVAC ( say ‘ aitch-vac ’), the facilities management techies ’ term for heating , ventilation and air conditioning .
“ HVAC was a bit of a dirty secret for data centres because for decades , it could be as expensive to cool data centres as it was to serve up Mips . And with a hyperscaler data centre , you ’ re highly likely to reap the benefits of being close to new energy sources too .
“ These enormous facilities tend to be different in another way . The hyperscalers have the vast budgets to purchase the best equipment and modern servers and other hardware tend to be like refrigerators at home .
“ That is , the more often you replace them , the smaller the relative power envelope they need . Stripped of unnecessary bells and whistles such as video chips , they are also far skinnier and purposefocused than generic servers . The Open Compute Project , a collaborative project to reimagine hardware design , suggests that 3.75 corporate data centre servers could be replaced by just one server at a hyperscaler facility .”
Brinded makes a point of saying that just as cloud takes away a lot of the complexities and inefficiencies of data centre management , it can also obviate a lot of the heavy lifting that it takes to move towards becoming a net-zero business .
“ Increasingly , ‘ smart ’ data centres will lead to savings of over a billion metric tons of CO 2 emissions over the next four years , IDC said . When the numbers are so large and the stakes are so high , CIOs and other executives will do well to take notice .”
CLOUD DATA CENTRES AREN ’ T JUST SCALED- UP VERSIONS OF TRADITIONAL DATA CENTRES . www . intelligentdatacentres . com
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