GROW REVENUES | section/other important info 1
for HigH-Density Computing
www.equinix.co.uk
ArCHiteCting
2 ArCHiteCting your DAtA Centre | TABLE OF CONTENTs
TABLE
OF
C
ONTENT
s
The drive towards higher-density computing ...3 High-density computing –
the challenge and the opportunity ...4 Delivering high-density computing in-house ...6 Platform Equinix™ – your high-density computing provider ...7 Conclusions ...8
3 ArCHiteCting your DAtA Centre | ThE drivE TOwArds highEr-dENsiTy COmpuTiNg
The data centre is a core area of the IT estate, presenting both
challenges and opportunities for IT to help the business achieve
strategic objectives and drive organisational change.
Technological change is inescapable, with increasingly powerful
compute devices transforming the data centre.
”The general trends observed are that a workload demand profile of x could be delivered today in a data centre footprint and power delivery profile half that of 3 years ago. Another view of these changes over a 10 year period are that what you could achieve from 10 cabinets 10 years ago could be delivered on 1 cabinet today. Some of the key drivers and changes for this are as follows:
• Processor core density and instruction set changes means more transactions per clock cycle
• Increase in the use of virtualisation increasing server density on the equivalent platforms
• Increase in the use of non-mechanical parts of traditional hard drive technology (SSD) to provide higher IOPS with an absolute power utilisation profile at lower levels
• Increase in the use of network virtualisation and logical abstraction at the network platform level bringing significantly higher circuit density over equivalent powered interfaces
• Increasing use of specific platform technology supporting specific workload types such as ARM, GPU, MPU Hadoop clusters”
Luke Harrison, Global Solutions Architect, Equinix
As we can see from these developments, innovation is driving change in physical architecture of the data centre. Server and storage technology is becoming consistently more dense, compact and connected, causing a shift towards higher-density architectures. However, many data centres today were not designed to support such closely packed physical configurations, creating challenges in two areas: power and cooling.
tHe Drive towArDs
HigHer-Density
4
HigH-Density Computing –
tHe CHAllenge AnD tHe opportunity
ArCHiteCting your DAtA Centre | ThE ChALLENgE ANd ThE OppOrTuNiTy ECOsysTEm
Inevitably, increasingly powerful servers, storage and network equipment require more electrical input. Just as Moore’s Law describes a doubling of transistors per chip every two years, projections of power consumption double every four as seen in the chart below. Traditional data centres were designed to have a uniform energy distribution of around 2 kilowatts (kW) to 4kW per cabinet. While this meets the majority of needs within colocation facilities, it does not address the needs of modern high power IT equipment.
Data centres also require significantly more cooling than in the past. The law of
conservation of energy applies: a cabinet drawing 20kW of power produces 20kW of heat, which needs to be cooled effectively in order to avoid overheating and failure. Traditional forced-air cooling methods become increasingly ineffective at densities above 15kW per cabinet.
To resolve these two issues, data centre architects are developing best practice around what is termed high-density computing. A high-density zone is one where the energy needed is more than 10kW per cabinet for a given set of rows. A standard cabinet of industry-standard servers needs 30 square feet to be accommodated without supplemental cooling; however, a cabinet that is 60 per cent filled could have a power draw as high as 12kW.
“ As the need for high-density servers
continues to grow, administrators are
going to be tasked with creating a more
cooling-ready data centre design.”
Bill Kleyman, MTM Technologies
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 50 30 40 20 10 12 15 17 19 24 38 43 0
Total Power (in GWs)
Source DCO intelligence 2012 Total Power (in GWs)
Chart showing data centre power consumption post 2006 to present. 2011 to 2013 shows that power consumption doubled in 2 years
5 ArCHiteCting your DAtA Centre | ThE ChALLENgE ANd ThE OppOrTuNiTy ECOsysTEm
According to our experts, any standard cabinet of blade servers that is more than 50 percent full will need to be in a high-density zone – one specifically designed to accommodate the power and cooling requirements created. High-density zones employ a combination of blade server arrays, higher power feeds and next-generation cooling – such as chilled water systems, hot and cold aisle containment or in-row and in-cabinet cooling – to enable energy and cost optimisation.
The resulting discipline of high-density computing is having a major impact on data centre architecture. As a result IT decision makers need to understand the benefits and implications of high-density computing. First and foremost perhaps, high-density zones are less costly than their traditional equivalent in terms of cabinets, wiring and networking. Plus, with less physical sprawl, operational overheads can be reduced.
In addition, high-density zones are far and away the best way to manage the lifecycle changes within the data centre, enabling more efficient capacity planning and resource flexibility.
“ High-density design is key to forward
planning infrastructure deployments and
technology refreshes. less sprawl and
cables in the physical world yet higher
logical service transactional density and
operational integration with cloud and
content service providers.”
Luke Harrison, Global Solutions Architect, Equinix
Businesses in high-density data centres also gain access to next generation applications and services, including:
• Virtualisation using homogeneous, High frequency words commodity servers
• Private cloud services built on that underlying virtualisation foundation
• Scale-out cloud architectures leveraging new technologies for data storage (e.g. Cassandra) or processing (e.g. Hadoop)
• High-density Computing for R&D and production business processing
• Development & testing of applications, which can be completed faster with access to more resources via in-house specialist partners
• Advanced applications including computation on graphic processing units (GPU), high frequency trading (HFT) and many others.
Businesses which cannot support high-density are constraining their business and wasting resources. Furthermore, they are missing a key opportunity to lower the overall cost of IT and implement innovation. However, developing high-density computing can be a challenge, as we shall see.
6 ArCHiteCting your DAtA Centre | dELivEriNg high-dENsiTy COmpuTiNg iN-hOusE
Delivering HigH-Density
Computing in-House
Senior IT and operations decision makers can take a range of routes to
incorporate high-density computing at strategic points in the company
infrastructure. One option, of course, is to build a dedicated,
state-of-the-art data centre for high-density computing – but it is incredibly
complex and expensive to set-up, run and maintain. The main issue
of adopting high-density computing in-house is the design of the data
centre needs to include planning for refresh cycles in IT hardware,
managing space and managing cooling.
One of the most-important strategic considerations in designing new data centres is balancing the rates of change between the building’s system and the IT systems. Within a 15-year period, electromechanical systems could typically need one round of modifications, while the IT systems might need to be refreshed two to three times. As a result, most organisations do not have the option of creating a high-density compute facility as existing buildings and infrastructure are simply not capable of supporting it. Cooling can be difficult to re-engineer in older facilities and expensive to refit, and it may not be easy or cost-effective to run additional power into an existing data centre, particularly given that enterprise and provider equipment can require multiple power options.
Equally, few organisations have the available expertise to understand cooling loads and power requirements and design a facility appropriate for the needs of the organisation. Getting it wrong could mean creating dangerous hot spots without adequate monitoring or controls.
Assuming such a facility could be built, operational resource can sometimes be limited (in terms of skills or availability) to meet the demands of an always-on data centre. The costs involved in building an in-house, high-density data centre are likely to outweigh any potential savings. And by the time one is built, the world may well have moved on given the 3-5 year refresh cycle of computer technology.
“ this leaves a huge gap between the
technology of hardware and of data
centres. so it’s safe to say that if your
data centre is between five and 10 years
old, there are going to be some major
deficiencies.”
7 ArCHiteCting your DAtA Centre | TOwArds COLLABOrATiON iN ThE dATA CENTrE
plAtform equinix™ –
your HigH-Density Computing proviDer
Colocation providers such as Equinix offer a number of
benefits that are particularly applicable to meeting the needs
of high-density computing. Not least that data centre costs
are lower, bandwidth is abundant and providers can scale
services with demand.
With its global International Business Exchange (IBX) data centres, Platform Equinix has built in high-density computing best practice and expertise from the ground up. Since the company’s inception Equinix has tracked – and in many cases driven - industry trends for data centre requirements. Constantly developing new designs for more efficient cooling and environmental control; with each new data centre opened Equinix raise the bar for average power density per cabinet. Equinix has sophisticated engineering analysis and monitoring to understand cooling requirements and heat issues, and address situations before they become a challenge.
Platform Equinix provides customers with infrastructure able to support the latest generation of compute and networking equipment, backed up by expert management and round-the-clock support. Equinix technical experts have configured some of the most complex installations for the world’s most demanding businesses, and are well versed in the needs and challenges high-density computing can present. That’s how Equinix can offer 24x7x365 on-site remote support and dedicated M&E technicians to ensure all eventualities are covered.
Platform Equinix offers a range of versatile options for high-density solutions including water-cooled cabinets, cold and hot aisle containment and cross-connects between non-connected customer spaces. Space and power can be scaled as your architecture grows and your business needs change.
Equinix has sophisticated engineering analysis and monitoring to understand cooling requirements and heat issues. Dedicated technology is used to monitor and address situations before they become issues.
As well as offering specific benefits to meet high-density computing requirements, organisations can interconnect inside Platform Equinix in neutral, carrier dense colocation space. Platform Equinix is home to an increasing number of large enterprises, as well as digital ecosystems for cloud, mobility, content and financial services.
Equinix recognise the challenges implicit in making an effective transition to a high-density solution. To achieve your specific goals, Equinix will first conduct a technical analysis to identify your requirements and build a solution for your needs. Equinix offers future-proof capacity supporting new requirements as they emerge
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ComPAny BuSineSS CHAllenge equinix ReSPonSe
etSy Etsy connects makers of handmade goods to buy and sell them. The Etsy community spans the globe with buyers and sellers in more than 150 countries. An overwhelming increase in buyers and sellers meant Etsy needed to prepare for extraordinary growth by deploying an infrastructure that was fast, scalable and highly available.
Etsy is now running 50 cabinets of high-density cabinet in the Equinix International Business Exchange (IBX) data centre in the New York metro area and at the Silicon Valley IBX campus. This houses Etsy’s off-site disaster recovery and storage infrastructure. The switch to high-density computing in the Equinix IBX ensures extremely high levels of uptime, performance and growth whilst ensuring energy costs didn’t spiral.
Box Box provides a secure content-sharing platform, content on Box can be shared internally and externally; accessed through iPad, iPhone, Android, TouchPad and PlayBook applications. In its early days Box’s infrastructure was hosted in a data centre in California, and had limited scalability and redundancy. With its application maturing and its customer base expanding globally, Box sought a top-tier, global data centre provider with the network density that could enable lower latency and higher throughput for its cloud services.
Utilise high-density data centre to deliver enterprise Cloud solutions. Equinix worked closely with Box to develop a comprehensive strategy for distributing a global network of nodes, which today act as the foundation for Box Accelerator, it’s recently announced global data transfer network. Equinix’s ability to add capacity to existing locations and expand globally further helped Box launch the new cloud storage service for business and enterprise customers. Today, Box has begun worldwide deployment, having just added various infrastructure elements in global Equinix data centres. This made it easier for Box to expand into new geographies with the assurance of receiving the same quality of service and performance.
tHe HeAltH lotteRy
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Leverage high-power-density space to ensure resilient connectivity and industry-leading availability for application and customer content. Equinix has provided high-power-density space with a broad choice of network service providers to provide resilient connectivity and industry-leading availability for application and customer content.
ArCHiteCting your DAtA Centre | CONCLusiONs
ConClusions
With the increasing power requirements of today’s technology,
high-power density configurations are critical to global businesses. It is no
longer a question of whether people need to move to high-density
solutions but how they implement such capabilities alongside existing
legacy equipment.
Equinix has the expertise to configure the right solutions to meet customers’ needs. Equinix take care of the heavy lifting around high-density computing in terms of design, deployment and operations, allowing customers to deliver innovation and meet business demands in the knowledge that the platform is robust enough to deal with all of their requirements, now and in the future.
9 ArCHiteCting your DAtA Centre | CONCLusiONs
“ Perception traditionally was that high-density equals high energy and is therefore difficult and expensive to manage with inevitable hot spots occurring. This meant significant additional investment in specialist power and cooling technology was required or more space needed to enable larger gaps between servers and promote natural cooling.
However, advancement in power and cooling, in parallel with advancements in processing power, has made high-density far more achievable and crucially, viable from a cost perspective. It is now easier than ever to control and monitor power in a high-density environment. This has led to a fundamental shift in opinion. The barriers to deployment of high-density have been broken down.”
Geraint James, Head of Data Centre NexitraOne
Further information
Equinix provides a range of value added services and features tailored for specific customer needs and industries. These range from the Equinix Ethernet Exchange - a global market where Ethernet buyers and sellers discover, transact with and interconnect to each other, fast-tracking their private network interconnectivity, lowering operational costs and accelerating revenue growth – to a host of industry-specific solutions such as proximity hosting or business continuity.
To find out about solutions specific to your industry, many of them
breaking new ground for infrastructure management and efficiency,
please visit info.equinix.co.uk/makeyourmove
Some indications of Taxation and incentive influencing factors in energy efficient data centre design and use. https://www.gov.uk/green-taxes-and-reliefs/climate-change-levy
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© 2013 equinix, inc.
www.equinix.co.uk
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Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX), connects more than 4,000 companies directly to their customers and partners inside the world’s most networked data centres.
Today, enterprise, cloud, networking, digital media and financial services companies leverage the Equinix interconnection platform in 31 strategic markets across the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific.
By connecting directly to their strategic partners and end users, customers are forming dynamic ecosystems inside Equinix. These interconnected ecosystems enable companies to optimise the performance of their content and applications and protect their vital digital assets
