Vertiv has released its annual list of the key data centre trends to watch in 2022. Vertiv experts see long-held conversations around efficiency and utilization in the data centre evolving to reflect a more comprehensive and aggressive focus on sustainability. This movement recognizes the urgency of the climate crisis, the relationship between resource availability and rising costs, and shifting political winds around the world.
The actions data centre decision-makers take on these fronts will have a profound impact on the digital economy in 2022 and beyond. The data centre industry has taken steps toward more climate-friendly practices in recent years, but operators will join the climate effort more purposefully in 2022. On the operational front, Vertiv experts predict some organizations will embrace sustainable energy strategies that utilize a digital solution that matches energy use with 100 per cent renewable energy and ultimately operates on 24/7 sustainable energy.
Fuel cells, renewable assets, and long-duration energy storage systems, including battery energy storage systems (BESS) and lithium-ion batteries will play a vital role in providing sustainable, resilient, and reliable outcomes. Thermal systems that use zero water are in demand, and we will see refrigerants with high global warming potential (GWP) phased down in favor of low-GWP refrigerants. Other factors, including the reliability and affordability of the grid, regional temperatures, availability of water and renewable and locally generated sustainable energy, and regulations that ration utility power and limit the amount of power afforded to data centres, play a part in the decision-making as well.
As today’s networks get more complex and more distributed and the augmented and virtual reality demands of the metaverse become more prominent, the need for real-time computing and decision-making becomes more critical. This real-time need is sensitive to latencies, and under the increasingly common hybrid model of enterprise, public and private clouds, colocation, and edge, full-time manual management is impractical, if not impossible. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) will be critical to optimizing the performance of these networks.
With every technological advance, there are ripple effects. The increase in AI will unavoidably increase computing and heat densities and, by extension, accelerate the adoption of liquid cooling. Among other challenges: lowering the barrier to entry places a premium on choosing the right vendors, platforms, and systems to trust.
Some 2.9 gigawatts worth of new data centre construction is under way globally. Those data centres will be the first built specifically to meet the needs of a post-covid world. More activity will be focused at the edge, where VMware projects a dramatic shift in workload distribution, from 5 per cent currently to 30 per cent over the next five years. Availability will remain the top priority, even at the edge, but lower latency is a rising need to support healthy buildings, smart cities, distributed energy resources, and 5G. The year 2022 will see increased investment in the edge to support this new normal (remote work, increased reliance on ecommerce and telehealth, video streaming) and the continuing rollout of 5G.
Various data centre equipment providers have been embracing integrated systems that allow for modular capacity additions for years, with integrated racks and rows and are among today’s most popular data centre offerings. The year 2022 will witness next step in integration as data centres work with providers integrating better the larger systems and deliver seamless interoperability.
Commenting on the release, Rob Johnson, CEO, Vertiv, said, “As we move into 2022, data centre operators and suppliers will actively pursue strategies that can make a real difference in addressing the climate crisis. For our part, we continue to focus on energy efficiency across our portfolio, as well as alternative and renewable energy technologies and zero-carbon energy sources, to prioritize water-free cooling technologies, and to partner with research leaders and our customers to focus on impactful sustainability efforts.”
Meanwhile, Subhasis Majumdar, managing director, Vertiv India, said, “Sustainability is increasingly making its way to mainstream conversations, and businesses will be prioritizing and building more environmentally-friendly ecosystems. Vertiv continues to innovate, focusing efforts on efficient, sustainable and highly available infrastructure solutions. With advanced cooling, power, IT management and integrated systems, our product portfolio offers a full line of solutions to support the unique challenges of customer data centres of every size.”
