Название: Data Centers of the Future: Reaching Sustainability
Автор: Jon Lin, Gary Aitkenhead
Издательство: O’Reilly Media, Inc.
Год: 2023-04-17
Язык: английский
Формат: pdf, epub (true)
Размер: 10.1 MB

As the demand for data grows exponentially, industries are looking to more sustainably grow their digital business footprint to maximize the benefits of the digital economy. Data centers, long perceived as egregious users of energy, are now strategically positioned to offer eco-friendly digital infrastructure. In their new role, these centers can support a material positive impact on global sustainability and climate change through the development of key innovations and efficiencies.

Three big trends are driving growth in every business and, in turn, driving the need for sustainable data centers. First, every business is a digital business, and every business that wants to succeed in the 21st century needs to negotiate its own transition to the digital economy. The technology industry has buzzed about big data, data science, and now machine learning and artificial intelligence, requiring larger and richer datasets at each stage. Any executive knows that, whatever else the company is about, it’s about data. As we move further into a digital economy, we see data at a scale that was unimaginable in the recent past. Petabytes are common, some companies have exabytes, and the industry is trending toward yottabytes and beyond. Wherever you have data at scale, you inevitably have data centers, and the data centers will grow in number as well as size and density.

The second trend has to do with the way businesses now use data. It’s been years since data was primarily used for batch jobs that ran overnight. Businesses now need data for real-time, or quasi real-time, applications. While there are many different kinds of data, all customers want their data as soon as possible.

A third trend: the world is getting warmer. Greenhouse gases have a real effect on the climate. The goal of the Paris Agreement is to limit global warming to no more than 2°C and ideally less than 1.5°C. Data centers are no exception. Environmental stewardship will be key to our survival.

Data centers sit at the intersection of all these trend vectors. They use a lot of power (currently estimated at over 1% of the world’s electricity), and increased demand for data guarantees that power usage will only increase, even as data centers become more efficient.