This analyst opinion discusses Omdia’s main takeaways from the DCD Virginia 2022 conference, which was held in Leesburg, Virginia.
Omdia view
Summary
Global economic growth continues to be threatened by multiple disruptions, including geopolitical, financial, and supply chain instabilities. Increasing compute requirements, fueled by digitalization, continue to drive data center buildout and a move toward denser servers and racks. These changes, in turn, require new approaches to fulfill power, cooling, and operations requirements while meeting sustainability goals. This analyst opinion discusses Omdia’s main takeaways from the DCD Virginia 2022 conference, which was held in Leesburg, Virginia in November.
Sustainability a key discussion topic
Sustainability was present in most discussions, and solutions were presented for how the data center industry could do better. Different approaches for achieving sustainability goals include using more sustainable energy resources, reducing energy and water consumption while meeting compute demands, using liquid cooling for cooling transformation, moving toward more intelligent operations through artificial intelligence (AI) tools, and considering embodied carbon to meet the desired carbon-free goals.
Planning is key to meeting requirements
Hyperscale data centers have high power requirements—they have a lot in common with planning cities from a grid-scale service requirement perspective. Building a multidisciplinary team and working with partners and utilities are key, as is considering sustainability goals. Based on the location, there are multiple features to think about for grid-scale power, such as utility capacities, renewable energy resources (e.g., solar, wind, hydropower, geothermal), microgrids, grid-interactive UPS, fuel cells, mini nuclear, energy storage systems (e.g., lead-acid, lithium-based, nickel-zinc, sodium-ion, liquid-metal), energy and water consumption, free cooling, liquid cooling, and so on.
Liquid cooling continues to gain interest
Liquid cooling was also key in most conversations as the way to improve the power-to-cooling ratio while reducing energy and water consumption. It was also discussed as the way to improve heat reuse, which remains a challenge. Multiple companies showcased liquid cooling solutions, including (in alphabetical order) Iceotope, Motivair, Submer, and Vertiv. Other companies showcased air cooling solutions, including (in alphabetical order) Airedale, Excool, Kelvion, Munters, Schneider Electric, Stulz, Trane, and Vertiv.
As liquid cooling technology continues to develop for data centers, new standards, best practices, and metrics are much needed. Omdia forecasts that a combination of air-cooled and liquid-cooled systems will become commonplace in data centers in the near future.
Toward more intelligent operations
Automation and intelligent monitoring capabilities are enabling the next generation of smart and connected equipment. The use of AI was highlighted as the way to process the massive amounts of data collected to improve data center management toward more intelligent operations. Monitoring systems are constantly evolving to incorporate AI tools to improve the data-driven decision-making process.
Technological challenges remain
While currently there is substantial R&D happening in the data center ecosystem, new technologies are facing barriers, including the following:
- Standardization and best practices to allow further scalability
- How to choose the right technology
- Manufacturing capacity
- Training, maintenance, and operations
Expect significant public and private investment
Given the significant growth projection for data centers, governments worldwide are working to support more sustainable technologies. For example, in the US, the recent bipartisan infrastructure law (Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act) provides incentives for new technologies. As a result, private industry players are also making significant investments in sustainable technologies.
Bottom line
What Omdia learned at the conference is much aligned with our research. Substantial innovation is happening within the data center industry. The global data center landscape is changing to meet increasing compute requirements and power demands. New technologies enabling higher efficiency and sustainability are becoming a must for all aspects of data centers—from planning to operations.
Appendix
Further reading
“The battery market is ramping up – and China is leading the race” (October 2022)
“High power rating UPS open new possibilities for data centers” (October 2022)
“Finding the low hanging fruit through data center operational maturity levels” (September 2022)
2022 Trends to Watch: Data Center Physical Infrastructure (December 2021)
“Smart grid ready UPS for an even more sustainable data center” (August 2021)
“Data center risk assessment: A decision-making tool” (July 2021)
“Data centers: Energy consumption is all about workloads” (June 2021)
Author
Moises Levy, PhD, Senior Principal Analyst, Data Center Physical Infrastructure, Cloud and Data Center Research Practice