UPS SYSTEMS
Fulfilling Data Centre Objectives
Modular Topology
By: Alan Luscombe, Director at Uninterruptible Power Supplies Ltd., a Kohler Company.
Introduction
Alan Luscombe looks
at the possibilities
Data centres use huge amounts of
electricity, with larger enterprises
spending millions of pounds on energy
every year. This reality, set against a
background of rising energy costs and
growing green legislation suggests that
energy efficiency would be data centre
operators’ top priority, but this is not
the case. While it is certainly a highly
significant factor, it is overridden in
most operators’ minds by concerns for
availability. In today’s always-on world,
a data centre cannot go offline. This
means that operators do want to save
energy and cut costs, providing they can
do so without compromising availability.
These twin goals apply to every aspect
of the data centre, including the UPS
installation. Fortunately modern
modular topology allows UPSs to make
their contribution to these goals.
A Growing Landscape
Enterprises in most business sectors are
generating a continued expansion in
demand for data processing capacity.
In the view of UK industry association
the Data Centre Alliance (DCA), this
is driving growth in the data centre
industry. Another industry participant,
Virtus Data Centres, has put figures
to this – they see the UK data centre
industry growing by 10 per cent to 20
per cent per annum, depending on
offered by modern
modular topology
market sector. Data centres of many
sizes and types populate this growing
landscape. Most visible are the hyperscale types built specifically for major
users such as Amazon, Facebook
and Google. Less visible, but more
ubiquitous data centres range in size
from large warehouses to installations
covering a few hundred square feet in an
office building.
Data centres are also characterised by
their ownership type – some are owned
and operated by the enterprise that
needs their data processing resource,
while an increasing number are run by
third party vendors providing colocation
facilities for multiple tenants. Growth in
colocation capacity is expected as client
enterprises become more comfortable
with entrusting their data resource to an
external third party processor.
One characteristic shared by all data
centres, irrespective of their size or type,
is their thirst for energy. According to
a report by Bank of America Merrill
Lynch, an average data centre is 40
times more energy-intensive than an
equivalently sized office building. This
can translate into scenarios where
energy represents up to 80 per cent of a
data centre’s running costs, as reported
by the UK Government-owned UK
Green Investment Bank.
Taken together, these factors
mean that enterprises of all sizes rely
increasingly on data centres that create
significant energy costs which they (and
their customers) must ultimately absorb.
Over time, these costs are likely to grow.
Energy prices are on a continuing
upward trend, while government
legislation, shareholders and customers
exert pressure to ‘go green’. These
effects will be multiplied as the Internet
of Things and big data drive the
demand for data processing up. Against
this background of large and rising
costs, one would imagine that data
centre managers and operators would
consider reduction of energy costs and
improved efficiency as one of their top
priorities. However, this is not the case.
What Operators Want
In today’s always-on world, a data centre cannot go offline
40 NETCOMMS europe Volume V Issue 6 2015
In a survey conducted by the Data
Center Users’ Group, which is a
collective of over 2,000 data centre, IT
www.netcommseurope.com