Aitizaz Hassan

From 2010 to 2020, the data centre industry in Pakistan experienced a spectacular growth. Data centres has evolved from ICT (information and communication technology) equipment rooms to cloud data centres.

According to a report of China Academy of ICT (CAICT), an independent research institution, rapid development of new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, big data, and 5G will bring a golden era, and market demand for data centres will increase dramatically. At the same time, data centres are facing several challenges in Pakistan.

The CAICT report says that lower power density is challenging data centres in Pakistan. Currently, the average power capacity in a data centres in the Pakistani market is 4kW/rack, but the CPU (central processing unit) and server capacity continuously increase with evolving IT computing capacity. As the demand for AI applications increases, the importance of AI computing power gets more importance.

To balance the efficiency and costs, data centres will develop with row-based precision cooling system to support the high-density trends. It is anticipated that power density of 15 to 20 kW/rack will be predominant in data centres by 2025.

Lower efficiency is also a problem for data centres. The report says that currently, lots of data centres in the Pakistani market take the traditional architecture to build a data centre with low-capacity equipment, and inefficient cooling system, which cause low efficiency. Therefore, energy saving and operating expense (OPEX) reduction are big challenges. To adopt higher efficiency (up to 97%), modular UPS (uninterrupted power supply) and cold/hot aisle containment to reduce the power usage effectiveness (PUE) of data centres and building green data centres are inevitable.

Modularisation and scalable architecture are also needed in data centres of Pakistan. The CIACT report indicates that more data centres will be established in full modular mode to address the problems of slow construction and high initial investment costs. Modular design will evolve from component modularisation to architecture modularisation and equipment room modularisation, and finally achieving full modularisation of data centre.

The full modular design will enable fast deployment, flexible capacity expansion, simple operations and maintenance (O&M), and high energy efficiency. The typical TTM (trailing twelve months) of a data centre is nine to 12 months, which is expected to be shortened to less than six months in the future by modular pre-fabricated architecture.

Currently, the mainstream data centres adopt a modular architecture. Modular data centres have been rapidly applied in many sectors such as the internet, telecommunications, finance, and government.

The report says that there is a lack of full digitalisation and AI-enablement in data centres. With continuous improvement of the IoT and AI technologies, data centres will gradually evolve from single-domain digitalisation in terms of O&M, energy saving, and operation to full-lifecycle digitalisation and automatic driving in terms of planning, construction, O&M, and optimisation. The AI will be widely applied.

Simplified power supply architecture should also be facilitated in data centres. The report says that lithium batteries must replace lead-acid batteries in the data centres. The power supply and distribution system of a traditional data centre is complex and fragmented, occupies a large footprint, and is difficult to locate faults.

A simplified power supply architecture will reduce power conversion times, shorten the power supply distance and footprint, and improve the space utilisation rate and system energy efficiency. Compared to lead-acid batteries, lithium batteries have advantages in terms of footprint and service life. With cost reduction, lithium batteries will be widely used in data centres in the future.

Credit : Independent News Pakistan-WealthPk