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Big tech companies like Google and Facebook have built some of the largest datacenters in the world to handle their massive traffic loads. But not all datacenters have to be huge to be effective. In fact, some of the most efficient datacenters come in small packages.
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The Need for Speed
A datacenter is a facility where computers and telecommunications equipment are housed. The three big tech giants – Amazon, Facebook, and Google – all have state-of-the-art datacenters that enable them to offer fast, reliable, and secure services to their users. But these datacenters come in small packages.
The global market for data center services
The global market for data center services is forecast to grow at a compound annual rate of 7.4 percent between 2016 and 2021, according to a report by MarketsandMarkets.
The report, “Data Center Services Market by Type (Managed Hosting, Co-location, and Disaster Recovery), Service Model (IaaS, PaaS, and MaaS), Application Area (IT & Telecom, BFSI, Healthcare, Government, Retail, Energy), and Geography – Global Forecast to 2021”, defines the data center services market as a comprehensive outsourcing that refers to the process of transferring all or part of the responsibility for managing an organization’s data center infrastructure to an external service provider. This usually happens when an organization lacks the necessary in-house expertise or resources required for managing its data center environment effectively.
According to the report, the growing need for cost-effective IT infrastructure management solutions and services is one of the major factors driving the growth of the data center services market. Moreover, the increasing awareness among organizations about the advantages offered by data center outsourcing is another major factor fuelling the growth of this market.
The rise of hyperscale data centers
The hyperscale data center is a new breed of facility that has been designed to meet the needs of the largest Internet companies. These giant facilities are often larger than a football field and can house more than a million servers.
The first hyperscale data center was built by Google in 2005, and since then these massive facilities have been constructed by Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon. These companies have invested billions of dollars in these gargantuan facilities, which are often located in remote areas where land is cheap and power is plentiful.
The scale of these data centers is unprecedented, and they are changing the way the Internet is being built. The rise of hyperscale data centers is one of the most important trends in the tech industry today.
The New Data Center Landscape
big tech companies are no longer the only ones with access to datacenters. In fact, there are now many options for small and medium-sized businesses. Here’s a look at the new data center landscape.
The data center arms race
The big tech companies are locked in an arms race to build the biggest and best data centers. But that doesn’t mean that these datacenters have to be massive. In fact, some of the most cutting-edge data centers are actually quite small.
One of the most notable examples is Facebook’s Prineville, Oregon data center. This facility was designed from the ground up to be as efficient as possible, and it’s actually quite a bit smaller than most people realize.
Just because a data center is small doesn’t mean that it can’t be packed with state-of-the-art features. In fact, many of the most cutting-edge data centers are actually quite compact.
The rise of edge data centers
The term “edge data center” is used to describe a facility that is located close to the edge of the network, often in or near a customer’s premises. Edge data centers are usually smaller than traditional centralised data centers, and are designed to provide low-latency services to local users.
Edge data centers are seen as a key part of the future of the internet, as they offer a number of advantages over traditional centralised data centers. These advantages include reduced latency, improved security, and increased resilience.
The rise of edge data centers is being driven by the increasing popularity of cloud services and the growth of Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Cloud services require low-latency access to data in order to function correctly, and IoT devices generate large amounts of data that need to be processed quickly. Edge data centers provide the ideal solution for these requirements.
There are a number of companies that are building edge data centers, including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook. These companies have invested billions of dollars in building their own edge data center networks.
The edge data center market is expected to grow rapidly in the coming years, with a number of key trends driving this growth. These trends include the increasing sophistication of IoT devices, the continued growth of cloud services, and the need for faster access to data.
The Benefits of Smaller Data Centers
As the world progresses, more and more people are turning to big tech companies for their data needs. The reliance on these companies has led to an increase in demand for smaller data centers. These centers come with a number of benefits that make them ideal for many businesses. The following paragraphs will discuss some of these benefits in detail.
Lower costs
One of the main reasons that big tech companies are interested in smaller data centers is because they can save a lot of money. Building and maintaining a large data center is extremely expensive, so if a company can reduce its size, it can reduced its costs significantly.
In addition to the initial cost of building a smaller data center, there are also ongoing costs associated with operating it. These include the cost of electricity, which is used to power the computers and other equipment in the data center, as well as the cost of cooling, which is necessary to keep the computers from overheating. By downsizing their data centers, companies can reduce these ongoing costs by a significant amount.
Increased flexibility
One of the benefits of smaller data centers is increased flexibility. When you have a smaller data center, you can easily add or remove capacity as needed. This is opposed to larger data centers, which can take months or even years to reconfigure.
In addition, smaller data centers are often located in areas that are close to the consumers they serve. This proximity can lead to reduced latency and improved performance.
Greater efficiency
In addition to the lower PUEs that smaller data centers can achieve, they also use less power overall. A 2015 study by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) found that smaller data centers – those using less than 5 MW of IT equipment – have PUEs that are 20% lower than larger data centers.
One of the reasons smaller data centers are more efficient is that they can be designed and built using principles of passive cooling, which can substantially reduce or eliminate the need for mechanical cooling systems. When combined with free cooling from outside air, passive cooling can eliminate the need for mechanical cooling systems entirely in some cases.
In addition to being more energy efficient, small data centers can also be more space efficient. The LBNL study found that data center footprints can be as much as 50% smaller for smaller data centers compared to larger ones. This is due in part to the fact that small data centers can often make use of existing space, such as empty server rooms or unused office space, which would otherwise go unused.
The Future of Data Centers
The continued growth of hyperscale data centers
In recent years, we’ve seen a continued trend of growth in hyperscale data centers. These are large facilities that are designed to support the immense computing needs of large organizations, such as tech giants and major corporations.
One of the driving factors behind this growth is the ever-increasing demand for data storage and processing. As our world becomes more and more digital, we are generating more data than ever before. This data needs to be stored somewhere, and it needs to be processed in order to be useful. That’s where data centers come in.
Hyperscale data centers are purpose-built to meet these demands. They are typically much larger than traditional data centers, and they are equipped with the latest and greatest technology. This allows them to provide the storage capacity and processing power that organizations need.
We can expect this trend of growth in hyperscale data centers to continue in the years to come, as the demand for data storage and processing continues to increase.
The continued rise of edge data centers
The continued rise of edge data centers will have a profound impact on the future of data centers, according to a new report from big-tech research firm Gartner.
In its report, “Predicts 2021: Data Centers and Cloud Infrastructure,” Gartner says that by 2025, edge data centers will host nearly 10% of all workloads, up from less than 1% in 2020. And by 2030, the firm expects that figure to rise to 30%.
The growth of edge data centers is being driven by the need for real-time data processing and the explosion of Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices. As more and more devices are connected to the internet, the demand for faster data processing will only continue to grow.
Edge data centers are able to process data faster than traditional centralized data centers because they are located closer to the devices that are generating the data. This reduces latency and allows for near-instantaneous decisions to be made based on the data.
This is critical for applications like autonomous vehicles, where lives could be at stake if decisions are not made quickly enough. It is also important for applications like augmented reality and virtual reality, where a delay in processing could result in a poor user experience.
While edge data centers are still in their early stages of development, they are already having a major impact on the design of traditional data centers. For example, Facebook has built several of its own edge data centers and has even begun retrofitting some of its existingdata centers to be more edge-friendly.
As edge data centers continue to grow in popularity, it is likely that we will see even more changes to the way that traditional data centers are designed and operated.
