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MICRO DATA CENTRES
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By Victor Avelar , Director and Senior Research Analyst , Schneider Electric Data Center Science Center www . schneider-electric . co . uk
As digital services continue to surge , micro data centre networks may have the ability to replace the need for traditional facilities
Network latency is a major issue in delivering services like video on demand and the Internet of Things . This problem is exacerbated given the increasing consumption of digital services through mobile devices . Massive centralised data centres far away from the point of consumption increase the latency for these applications compared to smaller edge data centres located closer to the point of use .
Micro data centres are becoming a vitally important option for organisations needing to deploy highperformance reliable IT resources at the edge , quickly and cost effectively . For the purpose of the comparisons made in this article we shall consider a micro data centre to be a self-contained , secure computing environment contained in a single rack and including all the storage , processing and networking necessary to run applications . Such a unit comes in a single enclosure with all the associated power , cooling , security and management tools , such as Data Centre Infrastructure Management ( DCIM ) software .
Accommodating growth Although larger prefabricated data centres the size of a small building , which can be delivered on the back of a trailer , also come under the general definition of micro data centre , such units will not be considered for the particular analysis undertaken here . There are four main factors driving the deployment of micro data centres at the edge of networks : scalability , speed of deployment , reliability and the growing popularity of outsourcing IT services to the cloud or colocation facilities .
The scalability of micro data centres allows companies to ‘ pay as they grow ' deploying only the IT infrastructure they need when they need it . Standardised , prefabricated units can be stepped and repeated in relatively small kW increments to accommodate growth requirements in IT as they arise .
The speed of deployment is a vital attribute in today ’ s fast-changing business world . With standardised , prefabricated and factory-tested units available ‘ off the shelf ’ IT management is spared the headache of designing , specifying and integrating from scratch a customised solution with all the attendant troubleshooting and testing iterations such an approach entails . The more standardised a unit is , the quicker it can be deployed . Inevitably there may be some customisation of prefabricated units to meet some very specific demands but a micro data centre will always be faster to deploy than a traditional data centre or server room .
A micro data centre that has been factory tested and qualified is likely to be more reliable than a custom-built one-off facility . A number of small data centres , based on the prefabricated model , can be used in combination to provide failover services to each other thereby increasing reliability even further . In the event that one such centre suffers an outage or runs out of capacity temporarily , switching its load over to another data can reduce or eliminate downtime .
Finally , although outsourcing the bulk of one ’ s IT requirements to the cloud or to a colocation provider is proving a cost-effective option for many organisations , there is often nevertheless a need to keep a certain amount
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