2022: Green Is the Color of Data Centers
2022-05-17
In 2020 alone, each person generated roughly 1.7 MB of data per second. Most significantly, as much as 90% of the world’s data has been created in just the past two years. In short, energy consumption by data centers and IT systems is only set to keep rising—ultimately accelerating the development of green data centers.
Vertiv, a global provider of digital infrastructure and continuity solutions, also highlighted the significant acceleration in efforts to address sustainability and the climate crisis in its recently released annual list of key data center trends to watch in 2022. “As we move into 2022, data center operators and vendors will be actively pursuing strategies that can deliver real impact in tackling the climate crisis,” said Rob Johnson, CEO of Vertiv.
Now, we turn our attention to the data center trends that experts have highlighted as likely to emerge in 2022 and beyond.
Green Data Centers: Addressing Sustainability and the Climate Crisis
According to Vertiv, the data center industry has made strides in recent years toward more climate-friendly practices; however, operators are set to engage even more deliberately in climate initiatives in 2022. On the operational front, Vertiv experts predict that some organizations will adopt sustainable energy strategies, leveraging digital solutions to align energy consumption with 100% renewable energy and ultimately operate on a 24/7 sustainable-energy basis.
“This hybrid distributed energy system can simultaneously provide both AC and DC power, which expands the options for improving efficiency and ultimately enables data centers to achieve carbon-free operations. Fuel cells, renewable assets, and long-duration energy storage systems—including battery energy storage systems (BESS) and lithium-ion batteries*—will all play a critical role in delivering sustainable, resilient, and reliable outcomes,” the report adds.
In the realm of lithium-ion batteries, Vertiv experts anticipate that lithium-battery recycling infrastructure will expand in 2022, thereby removing one of the few remaining barriers to the widespread adoption of lithium-ion batteries in data centers. Vertiv further predicts that, in the more immediate term, climate-change–related extreme weather events will influence decisions about where and how to build new data centers and telecommunications networks.
“Other factors, including the reliability and affordability of the power grid, regional temperature, the availability of water and renewable and locally generated sustainable energy, as well as regulations that impose rationing and limits on the amount of utility power supplied to data centers, all play a role in decision-making—and the same holds true for manufacturing,” it added.
Artificial Intelligence in Data Centers Becomes Real
Given that today’s networks are becoming increasingly complex and decentralized, the need for real-time computing and decision-making is growing ever more critical. Most importantly, the demand for augmented and virtual reality in the metaverse is also becoming increasingly prominent.
“This type of real-time demand is highly sensitive to latency, and under the increasingly prevalent hybrid models—spanning enterprise, public and private clouds, hosted environments, and edge computing—full-time manual management is impractical, if not outright impossible,” the report states.
In other words, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are critical for optimizing the performance of these networks, according to Vertiv. “Collecting the right data, building the right models, and training the network platform to make the right decisions require focused effort and time.”
The report states that, thanks to the availability of AI hardware from existing vendors, consistent cloud options, streamlined toolchains, and a strong emphasis on data-science education, even smaller companies are embracing artificial intelligence. Vertiv notes: “All of this has accelerated AI adoption in 2022.”
Post-Pandemic Data Centers Will Take Center Stage
According to Vertiv, approximately 29 gigawatts of new data center capacity is currently under construction worldwide. “These data centers will be the first purpose-built facilities designed to meet the demands of the post-COVID-19 era. Increased activity will shift toward the edge, with VMware projecting a substantial transformation in workload distribution there—from the current 5% to 30% over the next five years,” it added.
While availability will remain a top priority, Vertiv notes that the demand for reduced latency is steadily growing to support healthy buildings, smart cities, distributed energy systems, and 5G. The report concludes: “Overall, in 2022 we will increase investment in cutting-edge technologies to underpin this new normal—remote work, the growing reliance on e-commerce and telehealth, and video streaming—and continue rolling out 5G.”
Previous:
Kolorapus Special Cable (Shanghai) Co., Ltd
Address: Building 1, No. 351 Chengjian Road, Minhang District, Shanghai
Phone: 021-52961776
Hotline: 400-168-0366
Email: joy.liu@sh-apus.com
Friendship Links:
