MODULAR DATA CENTRES
13
Stepping with
confidence
Flexibility as required...
Historically, designing and building a data centre was a leap of faith. Matthew Gingell,
Strategy Director at ICTroom explains why multi-level modularity is the modern response.
Moving beyond the
container...
Much has been written concerning the benefits of deploying
pre-fabricated modular data centres, especially in the
context of comparison with the so-called traditional build.
Historically the term pre-fabricated was synonymous with
the use of a container and most beneficial use-cases relied
upon the fact that these could be shipped to site quickly,
offering pre-defined quality, coming as they do from a
structured manufacturing process. Oftentimes they were
used for temporary compute requirements or for difficult
geographic environments. But while containers can handle
high power densities, usually they can only hold a small
number of racks, so there are limitations.
From this modest start point, the first major industry
development, coming as it did with the accurate use of the
term modular, was the concept of building purpose-built
grown-up data centres (>1MW IT load) using pre-fabricated
and self-contained building blocks or modules. At the end
of a multi-year build-out the data centre looks and feels just
like its traditional counterpart and it offers the same 20-year
plus life span. Crucially however, the data centre can be up
and running in a fraction of the time that is likely with a
traditional bricks-and-mortar approach.
When it comes to capacity planning, modularity is
fundamental in matching supply and demand. It provides
the answer to the planning headache of understanding
exactly how much capacity should be provided and what
type of facility should be constructed to deliver it. Not
only can a new module be deployed once demand has
been firmed up, but the nature of the new build can be
adjusted to meet the specific needs of a new IT load. The
added module might have a higher power density than the
previous phases for example, or offer some specific security
services.
However, some words of caution: a modular approach is
not a panacea. There will be situations where the objective
and required functionality are so well-defined that there
is no advantage to building it incrementally. Secondly, a
pre-requisite of modularity is that additional modules can be
guaranteed to be delivered just-in-time, using a time frame
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