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Feature by the other services within the data centre . Ideally the PUE should be as close to 1.0 as possible . The revised ASHRAE guidelines and the resulting adoption of free air cooling have resulted in many modern data centres being built with a greatly reduced PUE .
Although the revised guidelines have reduced the need to humidify to combat ESD , the use of humidifiers in data centres has actually increased as a result . Low energy cold water humidifiers are not only delivering energy efficient humidification in cold winter months but are helping reduce PUE in warmer months when free air cooling alone doesn ’ t deliver enough cooling to satisfy the demand .
HUAWEI ' S ZHOU ON DATA CENTRE TRENDS , CHALLENGES , AND DEVELOPMENT DIRECTION While the remainder of this feature deals with the cooling aspect of data centres , RACA Journal had the opportunity at the Pan African DataCentres Exhibition & Conference , to talk to Huawei director of IT Consulting & System Integration Department , Zhou Yilin , Huawei VP of Global Technical Service about the data centre and Director of IT Consulting & System landscape and future Integration Department , Zhou Yilin . trends in 2023 .
“ Digital technologies have ushered in a new wave of technological revolution and industry transformation . Increasing requirements for data storage and processing the rapid development of data centres . At the same time , this brings new challenges to data centres , including different policy environments in regional customer requirements , and low-carbon sustainable development requirements . Globally , data centres are facing more complex and changing situations ,” says Zhou .
“ In the future , data centres in Africa will focus more on environmental protection , data security , and privacy protection . In addition , data centres in Africa will face more opportunities and challenges from the following aspects :
• Development of cloud computing and edge computing : With the increasing popularity of cloud computing and edge computing , data centres in Africa will face more challenges and opportunities . Data centres and service capabilities need to evolve and enrich to meet users ' requirements for intelligent , efficient , and secure services ;
• Construction of green data centres : African governments have started to promote the construction of green data centres to reduce their impact on the environment . In the future , Africa ' s data centres will focus more on environmental protection and sustainable development , and adopt more
© Eamonn Ryan / RACA Journal . energy-saving and environmentally friendly technologies and equipment ;
• Data security and privacy protection : With the increasing number of data breaches and cyber-attacks , data centres in Africa will pay more attention to data security and privacy protection . They need to adopt more secure and reliable technologies and solutions to enhance data encryption and access control to protect user data security and privacy .
In the context of global digital transformation , Zhou describes the direction of Huawei ' s core competitiveness in the future : “ As the key foundation for carrying digital economy services , data centres are the cornerstone of digital transformation in various industries . In the digital era , customer service scenarios in various industries are changing from single product integration to full-stack data centre integration . Huawei ' s full-stack data centre integration service solution provides full-stack service solutions , including data centre facility integration , IT integration and auxiliary operation , migration and disaster recovery , scenario-based intelligence , and campus digital platform integration . It covers the entire process of planning , construction , and operation , meeting the requirements of comprehensive , efficient , and intelligent construction in the architecture design , service rollout , and system operation of the data centre .
“ Huawei data centre integration service uses low carbon , energy saving , and prefabricated assembly to build green and simplified scenario-based typical configuration solutions ,” says Zhou . “ For example , for integrated DC scenarios , L1 + L2 are integrated to build a full-stack liquid cooling solution . We also build an efficient air-cooled and water-cooled system to support scenario-based energysaving solutions for hub clusters , helping customers reduce the PUE from more than two to less than 1.5 . PUE is the ratio of the total amount of power used by a computer data centre facility to the power delivered to computing equipment .
However , frequent natural disasters may cause power failures , device damage , and network interruptions in data centres , undermining the running and data security of data centres . Zhou explains that Huawei improves data centre resilience and ensures service continuity by providing automatic disaster warnings , automatic recovery solutions , one-click service switchovers , and unified ransomware detection and recovery management , helping customers improve service continuity and reduce disaster recovery ( DR ) management costs .
“ To meet the high reliability requirements of industry systems , Huawei provides industry-leading DR consulting , DR integration , DR drill services , and intelligent DR management platforms for industries such as finance , government , healthcare , electric power , and energy . It provides service solutions such as intra-city active-active , remote DR , two-site three-centre , and multi-centre , helping customers improve service continuity ,” says Zhou . RACA ‐
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