What Influence IoT Will Have on Data Center Power and Cooling Infrastructure?
The current condition of data center's power and cooling infrastructure will no longer look the same in the next few years. Given the emergence of disruptive trends like IoT and cloud, data centers will be challenged with demands being put on power and cooling systems. Let's discuss how the new trends are influencing power and cooling systems.
Increased storage demands directs to power and cooling demands
The number of connected devices is increasing each day and so is the amount of data. In one of our blogs, we discussed how IoT is accelerating demands on data center concerning data storage. The demand on power and cooling is associated with this IoT deluge. Surely, if IoT adoption will grow, so will its demands, which is directly going to impact data centers as all the data generated needs to go somewhere and data center is the only way here.
Karen Riccio from Data Center Knowledge wrote in an article addressing the IoT's influence on the data centers that the trends are placing extraordinary demands on current data center networks. Moreover, the requirements are so heavier for speed and bandwidth that IT industry is finding it difficult to match pace. Other experts point out that how are we supposed to power all the data generated today. Are our electrical and cooling infrastructure efficient enough to cope with the demand and provide sufficient supply? If yes, then will we be able to efficiently cater resources for the next decade? Experts rightly say that in order to address the current computing requirements, we need to have power that is reliable, available in sufficient amount and is sustainable and efficient.
The new trends such as BYOD, IoT, cloud, all need real-time processing and traditional data centers were not designed to address such demands. Likewise, power and cooling infrastructure were not designed to handle these new technologies. So should the data center industry manage power and cooling needs for years to come? Building flexibility in the power infrastructure. This means that IT operators need to meet the exiting requirements while also make space for future development. This technique is essential as under and over-provisioning can be really expensive and cause unwanted IT overhead.
In conclusion, data centers need to adopt new technologies and evolve to address the new emerging demands. Moreover, the decision made should have a long-term effect and thus, IT leaders need to find an approach that can effectively balance reliability with scalability.
