Is Modular Design for Data Center Right Choice for Future?

Modular design for data centers is a current hot topic in IT industry. Companies are struggling to meet IT need and maintain efficiency. If data center companies choose to include modular design, then they have to select pod or containerized design. Modular design will provide flexibility to data centers. Some of the benefits enjoyed by modularized data centers are:

 Speed:

Modular Data Centers can be built 75% faster than conventional data centers.

Efficiency:

In Modular Data Centers hardware can be addressed incrementally, rather than immediate constructing entire data center space. In Dell data center solution engineering team are working hard to optimize entire data centers to reduce operational cost.

Flexibility:

Modular Data Centers are designed with standardized infrastructure which enables data centers to use operating system universally. This design will allow designers for easy replacement of hardware and operating system. A truly modular data center is either incrementally constructed or uses containerized solution.

Altering a traditional data center to Modula Data Center is similar to constructing a new facility with blocks of buildings, so it’s preferred to implement containerized approach in such conditions. Now let us have a close look

about POD design of data centers and Containerize solution

Pod Design for Data Centers:

In pod design data center consist of IT room, a supporting infrastructure room and IT computer room.  Supporting Infrastructure room includes mechanical and electrical room which provide power, cooling to IT computer room. Later design engineers can include any number of IT computer room based on their load requirements.

Instead of supplying space, power and cooling for an over build data centers at 50% efficiency rate, companies can divide data centers into small pods. Let us have an example, suppose a company with 10,000 sq ft area, companies can estimate a facility based on requirement and build a small pod of 1000 sq ft of storage and server equipment. Company can include adjutant pods based on IT requirements by following “pay as you grow” approach. This approach can lower the overall operating expenses and also increase the efficiency of the data center.

Containerized Solution for Data Centers:

Instead of designing a pod design from scratch companies can choose containerized solution, if company is ready to build, relocate or expand its facility. By following this containerized solution companies can lower their operating and capital cost, companies can also be benefited by avoiding local building techniques and codes. Cooing systems and airflow to servers can be engineered before implementing in the plant to optimize efficiency and performance. Containerized data centers can cut down deployment time from one year to weeks. Containerized data centers are best suited for remote locations. Containerized solutions gain more points in terms of mobility, containers can be placed anywhere and all containers will be pretested before deploying to the centers. Containerized solution can also be used as temporary solution when companies have expansion plan or when data centers come across any disaster. Apart from all these Containerized solution will provide multi-location support and high redeployment capabilities.

Before selecting any of the two modular design, it’s better to have a look at advantages and disadvantages of the two designs.

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