May 27, 2016 at 10:13Modular data centers: Datacenter of IaaS provider IT-GRAD
/ photo Robert CC
According to IDC, the number of data centers around the world in 2017 will reach 8.6 million, and by 2018 they will occupy an area of 180 million square meters. Some large corporations have to build a new data center every 3-5 years, and each of these data centers costs about $ 100 million, because the budgets for their construction and maintenance sometimes represent numbers with nine zeros.
Robert Wagner, a software developer, said Facebook is a good example, which spends $ 500 million to build a new data center and then gives $ 10 million a year to its maintenance.
In this regard, companies are looking for ways to reduce the cost of construction and maintenance of large data centers. For example, Apple is constantly striving to reduce energy costs. According to the company's reports, since 2013, 100% of their data centers and 94% of offices have been working on renewable energy sources. The company's data center in Maiden is surrounded by solar panels occupying 400,000 square meters of area and generating 42 million kWh of electricity per year.
The Digital Beijing data center in Beijing uses exclusively LED lamps, which consume 60% less electricity, and a special glass wall prevents the penetration of heat into the interior, reducing cooling costs.
In order to somehow reduce the cost of building and maintaining data centers, mankind came up with modular data centers. The idea is somewhat reminiscent of conveyor technology for the production of Henry Ford cars.
A modular data center is a data center consisting of typical system elements - modules. The module itself is a mobile data center equipped with racks, uninterruptible power supplies and all kinds of auxiliary equipment, including power supplies, cooling systems and fire extinguishing systems.
The modular data center can be delivered anywhere in the world at the request of the customer, since it is easy to transport in parts and assemble on site. However, the main advantage of a modular data center is its high deployment speed. Creating, configuring and mounting a data center takes less than a month, since the assembly can be performed in parallel, unlike traditional linear deployment.
Due to the fact that each module is a standardized element, the infrastructure is easily scalable. The only condition is the availability of free space. Thus, the organization has the ability to quickly respond to the needs of a growing business.
Modules can be carried out to the outside, guarding the perimeter with a fence - the main thing is that there is an appropriate infrastructure. Also, hardware units can be easily replaced with new ones if the technology is outdated or needs to be updated, and you can plan a budget for several years ahead.
It should be noted that the operation of modular data centers is quite active. For example, two companies involved in the development of technology for data centers - Vapor IO and BaseLayer - joined forces to create the world's most productive data center, which could be deployed anywhere where there is an outlet and a network connection. According to Vapor IO CEO Cole Crawford, there is already at least one customer for the new product.
IBM also added modular data centers to its portfolio of technology options by developing the Alliance ITX modular data center with iFortress.
Jerry Lyons, president and chief executive officer of iFortress, notes that it took several months to settle in order to solve the element base problem, and now the company can create drawings and determine the list of necessary elements two weeks after the client provides the area data and requirements for the energy capacity of the facility.
iFortress is going to release and pre-configure the solution for each order at its plant in South Carolina, and then send it to the customer’s site for final assembly, where the data center is connected to communications and cooling systems.
Data Center SDN
It should be noted that the SDN data center, which houses the equipment of IT-GRAD, also uses modular technologies. The total area of technological premises of SDN is 6500 square meters. Moreover, the design capacity of the data center is 1476 racks with a load of 6.3 kW per rack and a total capacity of 14 MW. All of them are located in 9 server modules.
Interest in the modular SDN data center is caused by the integrated Stack.CUB solution. It allows you to deploy modular data centers indoors and outdoors with high rates of energy efficiency, reliability and environmental friendliness.
The technology allows you to start the power of the data center in work in stages, without affecting the operation of the main equipment used in the data center. All this significantly reduces construction costs and minimizes equipment downtime. Such a data center gradually (as necessary) is overgrown with new modules, covering the needs of customers.
You can configure a modular data center as you like, based on the requirements of the organization. Suppose the old version of the infrastructure was a design of two server cells and single cells of a power supply and air exchange system.
You can connect to it either an additional server cell ...
... or additional cells of power supply and air exchange systems.
The SDN uninterruptible power system uses Hitec Power Protection BV dynamic uninterruptible power supplies, which differ from other solutions in reliability, environmental friendliness and relatively small size.
The SDN has its own distribution substation, and the power of the modular center is provided by two independent inputs of 10 kV. From the distribution substation, the voltage is supplied to the transformers, each of which is part of the uninterruptible power supply units.
A single module contains its own dynamic uninterruptible power supply (UPS) and switching equipment, where mutual redundancy with redundancy N + 1 is organized. In SDN, eight DIBPs with direct diesel support of 1600 kVA each perform the functions that in the classic circuit take on surge protectors, uninterruptible power supplies with batteries, diesel generator sets and switching devices.
The issue of cooling and ventilating the machine rooms in the SDN is decided by KyotoCooling installations. The solution used is based on the principle of rotary heat transfer, and the temperature regime for the equipment is maintained in accordance with the new ASHRAE recommendations regarding the microclimate in the data center.
Cooling equipment is presented in the form of rotary heat exchangers distributed over the territory of the data center. Their number and location is determined according to the needs for heat removal from existing equipment.
If additional cooling is required, for example in the summer, the possibility of using freon circuits of heat pumps is provided. This approach saves energy, which positively affects the cost of services for customers.
In conclusion, I would like to note that the cooperation between IT-GRAD and SDN began with the official opening of the cloud platform and the signing of an agreement, according to which the data center has been independently promoting the cloud services of IT-GRAD for more than a year. This makes it possible to provide popular IT services.Rent an IaaS cloud certified to PCI DSS.
PS Fresh IaaS Digest : 30 Cloud Security Content.
