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JP The dilemma of traditional data centers
In the current era of digitalization, data centers, as the “behind-the-scenes heroes” of the digital world, bear the heavy responsibility of storing and processing massive amounts of data. However, the bottlenecks of traditional data centers in terms of space, efficiency, energy consumption, etc., have become increasingly prominent, and it is gradually difficult to keep up with the pace of development.
The spatial layout of traditional data centers is like a chaotically planned “maze”. With the booming business, the number of servers, storage devices, network devices, etc,. has continued to increase, and the space of data centers has become increasingly crowded. The narrow spacing between devices not only brings great inconvenience to daily maintenance and management but also poses serious safety hazards. Moreover, due to the lack of forward-looking planning, many data centers did not fully consider future expansion needs at the beginning of construction, making it difficult to effectively expand space in the later stage. When enterprises need to add new equipment or expand their business scale, they often fall into the dilemma of “lack of space”. They either have to re-select a new site to build a new data center, or they can only barely piece together equipment in a limited space, which will undoubtedly increase the cost and operational risk of the enterprise.
From the perspective of efficiency, the construction and deployment process of traditional data centers is like a long and tedious “marathon”. From project planning, site selection, and civil construction to equipment procurement, installation, and commissioning, each link requires a lot of time and energy. The construction period can easily last for months or even years. In this rapidly changing digital age, such a long construction period obviously cannot meet the business needs of the rapid development of enterprises. In addition, the management method of traditional data centers is relatively extensive and lacks effective automated management methods. Managers need to manually monitor the status of equipment and adjust equipment parameters, which is not only inefficient but also prone to human error. Once a device fails, it often takes a long time to troubleshoot and repair the fault, which will cause business interruption and bring huge economic losses to the company.
Excessive energy consumption is also a major problem faced by traditional data centers. IT equipment such as servers and storage devices consume a lot of electricity during operation. At the same time, to ensure the normal operation of the equipment, the data center also needs to be equipped with a huge refrigeration system to reduce the temperature of the equipment. According to statistics, in the power consumption of traditional data centers, the energy consumption of IT equipment itself accounts for about 40%, while the energy consumption of auxiliary equipment such as refrigeration systems is as high as 60%. Such high energy consumption not only increases the operating costs of enterprises but also puts great pressure on the environment. Today, when green environmental protection is advocated, the high energy consumption of traditional data centers seems out of place.
What is Ma odular Data Center?
When traditional data centers were in trouble, Modular Data Center, or modular data center came into being, opening up a new path for the development of data centers and bringing new solutions.
A modular data center is a data center that is prefabricated and quickly deployed in factories with micro-modules as independent units. In simple terms, it is like a “data center building block” that has been carefully designed and assembled. Each micro-module is an independent small data center, which includes power distribution, air conditioning, monitoring, cabinets and their structural systems (including cabinets, supporting structures, ceilings, bridges, cold channels, etc.), and several functional units. These components are all prefabricated in the factory. Just like building blocks, you only need to assemble these micro-modules on site to quickly build a complete data center.
Take a typical modular data center project as an example. An enterprise plans to build a new data center to meet the needs of its rapid business development. After adopting the modular data center solution, each micromodule is prefabricated in the factory in advance, including the internal precision air conditioners, power distribution cabinets, server cabinets, and other equipment, which have been installed and debugged. After being transported to the site, the construction team completed the assembly of multiple micromodules and the joint debugging of the overall system in just a few weeks, allowing the data center to be put into use quickly. Compared with the construction cycle of traditional data centers, which often takes several months, the advantages are self-evident.
The IT cabinets in the micromodule are usually placed in two rows. When the server is delivered and put on the shelf, the cold channel of the micromodule can be closed, effectively improving the cooling efficiency. Moreover, the external dimensions between the cabinet units of different functions (power distribution, air conditioning, etc.) in the micromodule are standardized, similar to the cabinet structure, which enables them to be quickly connected and installed on site, greatly shortening the construction period and reducing the complexity of on-site construction.
The secret of the core system
The key to the modular data center’s ability to stand out from many data center types lies in the efficient coordination and innovative design of its internal core systems. These core systems are like important organs of the human body, each of which undertakes indispensable key tasks and jointly ensures the stable and efficient operation of the data center. Next, let’s explore the secrets of the core system of the modular data center.
Power distribution system: the cornerstone of stable power supply
The power distribution system is the cornerstone of the stable operation of the modular data center, just like the “heart” that provides a steady stream of power for the super “machine” of the data center. In the modular data center, the external power required by the micromodule is supplied by two low-voltage power distribution systems at the same time. This double insurance design greatly improves the reliability of the power supply. Even if one of the main power sources is abnormal, the other can quickly take over to ensure the normal operation of the data center.
The internal power supply of the micromodule adopts AC + high-voltage DC (or UPS) dual power supply. The AC side is directly supplied by the mains, and the high-voltage DC side is powered by the HVDC rectifier cabinet (or UPS). During normal operation, they each bear 50% of the IT load. Once any one of the mains power is abnormally powered off or flashed, the other power supply can quickly and seamlessly switch to ensure uninterrupted power supply for each system. For example, in the data center of a financial institution, after adopting the modular data center power distribution system, even if it encountered a short-term failure of the regional power grid, it successfully achieved zero power interruption with its stable power distribution system, ensuring the normal financial transactions and avoiding huge economic losses and customer trust crisis caused by power outages.
Air conditioning system: solving the heat dissipation problem
As the power density of IT equipment in the data center continues to rise, the heat dissipation problem has become a major bottleneck restricting the development of data centers. The air conditioning system of the modular data center, especially the inter-row air conditioner, provides a perfect solution to this problem, just like the “air conditioning guard” of the data center, always guarding the coolness of the equipment.
The inter-row air conditioner adopts a horizontal air supply method, which has many significant advantages compared with the traditional precision air conditioner’s downward air supply method and completely overcomes the shortcomings of traditional precision air conditioners. It can automatically change the capacity to operate and flexibly adjust the cooling capacity according to the actual heat load requirements of IT equipment, avoiding energy waste. The return air temperature of the inter-row air conditioner is high, the wind distance is short, and it can achieve full sensible heat operation, which greatly improves its heat exchange efficiency and effectively curbs the generation of hot spots in the data center. In the data center of a large Internet company, after adopting inter-row air conditioning, the average temperature of the data center was reduced by 3-5℃, hot spots were effectively solved, the failure rate of IT equipment was significantly reduced, and the service life of the equipment was extended, saving the company a lot of equipment maintenance and replacement costs.
Monitoring system: the smart brain of the data center
The monitoring system plays the role of “smart brain” in the modular data center. It is like the “clairvoyance” and “wind hearing” of the data center, realizing all-around and centralized monitoring and management of the power environment of the computer room site. Through this system, managers can control every move of the computer room in real time to ensure that the data center is always in the best operating state.
The computer room environment monitoring system can comprehensively monitor the computer room environment system (such as water leakage detection, temperature and humidity, smoke detection, cameras, etc.), computer room equipment (power distribution system, DC power distribution cabinet, air conditioning, intelligent PDU, etc.), and security system (access control system, video surveillance, etc.). Once an abnormality occurs in a certain link, the system will immediately issue an alarm and locate the fault location in time through an intuitive interface, providing accurate fault information to the operation and maintenance personnel, helping them to take measures to repair it quickly. In the data center of a scientific research institution, the monitoring system promptly detected that the temperature of a server had risen abnormally. Based on the information provided by the monitoring system, the operation and maintenance personnel quickly inspected and maintained the server, avoiding damage to the server due to overheating and ensuring the smooth progress of scientific research.
Cabinet and its structural system: Creating efficient space
To reduce the energy consumption of the data center and improve the cooling efficiency of air conditioning, the modular data center adopts a closed cold (or hot) channel design. This design is the core highlight of the cabinet and its structural system, creating an efficient space utilization model for the data center.
Take the closed cold channel as an example, its products are composed of end doors, skylights, channel seals, monitoring accessories, etc. The door panel assembly adopts double-sided sliding doors, and the main frame material is a high-quality cold-rolled steel plate with plastic spraying treatment on the surface. It is not only sturdy and durable but also beautiful. The door leaf comes with a tempered glass window, which is not only convenient for observing the operation of the internal equipment but also effectively prevents dust and debris from entering. The skylight design has two specifications: fixed and flip, which supports the function of fire gas entering the channel. The skylight is made of large-area translucent board material with a light transmittance of not less than 90%. Making full use of the lighting in the computer room can also effectively reduce lighting energy consumption. Other components, such as the bottom baffle of the cabinet, LED lighting strips, temperature and humidity sensors, sound and light alarms, cameras, etc., each perform their duties and jointly provide guarantees for the normal operation of the closed cold channel. The LED auxiliary lighting system designed in the channel meets the requirement that the illumination of the computer room is not less than 500LUX, providing a good working environment for operation and maintenance personnel. These designs not only improve space utilization, but also further optimize the cooling effect, reduce energy consumption, and achieve efficient and energy-saving operation of the data center.
Compared with the traditional ones, what are the advantages?
Quick deployment, time cost is halved.
The construction of traditional data centers is like a long and complicated marathon. From the initial planning and design to civil construction, equipment procurement,t and installation, and commissioning, each link requires careful preparation and long waiting, and the construction period is often as long as months or even years. The emergence of modular data centers has completely broken this long construction period. It adopts the mode of factory prefabrication and on-site assembly. Just like building blocks, each micro-module has completed most of the assembly and commissioning work in the factory. After being transported to the site, it only needs simple splicing and connection to be put into use. Generally speaking, it only takes more than ten weeks from the design to the deployment of modular data centers. Compared with traditional data centers, the construction period is greatly shortened, which can quickly meet the business needs of enterprises and allow enterprises to seize the initiative in the fierce market competition. When an Internet company expands its business rapidly, it needs to establish a new data center quickly. After adopting the modular data center solution, it only took 12 weeks from determining the demand to the launch of the data center. Compared with the traditional construction method, it saves a lot of time, allowing new businesses to be carried out in time and win market share. Moreover, a large number of power infrastructure equipment has been integrated into the modular data center, and it can be put into operation by adding corresponding IT equipment, which further shortens the construction time. At the same time, modular design makes site selection more flexible. As long as there are basic resources such as water, electricity, and network, whether it is the company’s office building, warehouse, or even parking lot, it can become a place for modular data centers, greatly reducing the restrictions on site selection and the complexity of external supporting projects.
Flexible expansion, more reasonable investment
In traditional data centers, later expansion is like a difficult “operation”. Due to the lack of forward-looking planning and standardized design, when enterprises need to add equipment or expand their business scale, they often face problems such as insufficient space and poor equipment compatibility. To meet the expansion needs, enterprises may need to carry out a large-scale transformation of existing data centers, dismantle some equipment, rewire, adjust cooling and power supply systems, etc., which will not only cost a lot of money and time but may also cause business interruptions and bring huge losses to enterprises. Moreover, when expanding capacity, traditional data centers often need to invest a large amount of money at one time to build redundant infrastructure to meet the possible future business growth needs, which leads to a waste of resources and unreasonable investment.
Modular data centers provide enterprises with a more flexible and economical way to expand. It adopts modular design, and each micromodule is like an independent “data center unit”, which can be flexibly configured and expanded according to the business needs of the enterprise. When the business of the enterprise grows, it only needs to add the corresponding micromodule, without large-scale transformation of the entire data center. This on-demand expansion model allows enterprises to gradually increase investment according to actual business needs, avoiding the financial pressure and resource waste caused by one-time large-scale investment. In the process of business development, a financial enterprise initially adopted a modular data center to meet business needs. As the business continued to grow, the enterprise gradually added two micromodules according to actual needs, realizing the smooth expansion of the data center. The entire expansion process is not only fast and convenient but also cost-controllable, ensuring the continuous and stable development of the business.
Energy-saving pioneer, green new choice
The energy consumption problem of traditional data centers has always been criticized. Because its cooling system is often designed for the entire computer room, it cannot accurately meet the heat dissipation needs of IT equipment, resulting in a large amount of energy being wasted in cooling non-critical areas of the computer room. Moreover, the traditional data center has a serious mixture of cold and hot air flows, uneven temperature gradients, and prominent local hot spots, which not only affects the normal operation of IT equipment but also further increases energy consumption.
Modular data centers have performed well in energy saving and can be called “energy-saving pioneers” in the field of data centers. It abandons the practice of traditional data centers, focusing on the temperature of the entire physical computer room,m and focuses on the inlet temperature of IT equipment. By increasing the inlet air temperature of the cabinet, the energy consumption of the refrigeration system is effectively reduced within the temperature range that ensures the normal operation of the server so that every bit of cooling can be accurately applied to IT equipment. The modular data center adopts a closed channel construction method to separate the cold channel from the hot channel, avoiding the ineffective heat exchange of the cold and hot airflows and greatly improving the cooling efficiency. Through point-to-point precise cooling, the inter-row air conditioner can flexibly adjust the cooling capacity according to the actual heat load requirements of the IT equipment, thus achieving efficient use of energy. Minsheng Bank Jinan Branch implemented a green energy-saving strategy by building a modular data center. The PUE value of the data center computer room was reduced from 2.1 to 1.4, and the annual power consumption was reduced by more than 50%, which contributed positively to the realization of the “dual carbon” goal.
Intelligent management, easier operation, and maintenance
The management method of traditional data centers is relatively extensive and lacks effective automated management methods. Managers need to manually monitor the status of equipment and adjust equipment parameters, which is not only inefficient but also prone to human error. Once a device fails, it often takes a long time to troubleshoot and repair the fault, which will lead to business interruption and huge economic losses to the company.
The modular data center is equipped with an advanced intelligent management system, which is like giving the data center a “smart brain” to achieve multi-level and refined energy consumption management of the data room. By collecting and analyzing various data in real time, such as equipment operating status, energy consumption data, environmental parameters, etc., the intelligent management system can promptly discover potential problems and provide corresponding solutions. It can also output energy-saving optimization solutions based on big data analysis to help companies reduce energy consumption costs and achieve green operations.
In terms of asset life cycle management, the intelligent management system also plays an important role. It can track and manage the assets of the entire network in real time, including the procurement, warehousing, installation, use, maintenance, and scrapping of equipment, to ensure the safety and effective use of assets. When the equipment needs maintenance or replacement, the system will issue an early warning to remind the operation and maintenance personnel to deal with it in time to avoid the impact of equipment failure on the business. After a large enterprise’s data center adopted a modular data center intelligent management system, the operation and maintenance personnel can monitor the operation status of the data center anytime and anywhere through the mobile phone APP, realizing remote management and fault diagnosis. In an equipment failure, the intelligent management system promptly issued an alarm and accurately pointed out the location and cause of the failure. The operation and maintenance personnel quickly took measures to repair it. It took only 30 minutes to restore the normal operation of the equipment, greatly improving the operation and maintenance efficiency and ensuring the continuity of business.
Application scenario award
With their unique advantages, modular data centers have demonstrated strong adaptability and application value in various industries. Like a master key, it opens the door to efficient and convenient data center needs in different industries.
- Internet industry: Efficiently carrying massive data
The Internet industry is known for its huge amount of data and rapid business development. The rapid deployment and flexible expansion characteristics of modular data centers meet the urgent needs of Internet companies for data centers. Take Tencent as an example. With the continuous expansion of its business, the number of users has exploded, which puts extremely high demands on the computing and storage capabilities of data centers. Tencent adopts a modular data center solution, which can quickly build new data center modules in a short time to promptly meet the needs of business growth. Moreover, the flexible expansion capability of the modular data center allows Tencent to add or reduce modules at any time according to business fluctuations, optimize resource allocation, and effectively reduce costs. - Financial industry: ensuring data security and stability
The financial industry has extremely high requirements for data security and stability. Any data loss or system failure may lead to serious consequences. The high reliability and redundant backup design of the modular data center provide solid data protection for the financial industry. Minsheng Bank Jinan Branch adopted the modular data center solution in the construction of the new data center, which reduced the PUE value of the data center computer room from 2.1 to 1.4 and reduced annual power consumption by more than 50%. The solution dynamically adjusts the power supply and cooling capacity required by the load according to the load conditions, realizes the intelligent linkage management and refined operation of IT equipment and computer room infrastructure, and ensures the stable operation of financial business. At the same time, the intelligent monitoring system of the modular data center can monitor the equipment status in real time, discover and solve potential problems in time, and effectively ensure the security of financial data. - Manufacturing: Promoting digital transformation
In the wave of digital transformation in the manufacturing industry, modular data centers play a key role. It can provide efficient data processing and storage capabilities for manufacturing enterprises and support production management, supply chain optimization, intelligent manufacturing, and other business of enterprises. For example, after introducing a modular data center, an automobile manufacturing company realized the real-time collection and analysis of production data and improved production efficiency and product quality through refined management of the production process. The flexible expansion capability of the modular data center also reserves sufficient space for the company’s future business expansion and technology upgrades, helping manufacturing companies to maintain their competitiveness in the digital age. - Government: Improving the efficiency of government services
Government departments undertake a large number of public service functions and have strict requirements for the performance and reliability of data centers. The application of modular data centers can effectively improve the efficiency and quality of government services. YST Group assisted the Guangxin District Government of Shangrao in its digital transformation and upgrading, and provided the MC6000 series of intelligent micro-module data centers, which integrate all subsystems of traditional data centers, such as cabinets, refrigeration, power supply and distribution, airflow management, fire protection, wiring, security, monitoring, lighting, etc., greatly shortening the construction period, efficiently and reliably promoting project construction, supporting front-end government services, and meeting the needs of various administrative units in the Citizen Center for settlement and government services. - Healthcare: Optimizing the medical service experience
In the medical field, modular data centers provide strong support for the hospital’s information construction. It can integrate medical information systems, realize the sharing and rapid processing of medical data, and improve the efficiency and accuracy of medical services. The MC6000 modular data center of East Group successfully helped the Haichang Street Health Service Center in Haining, Jiaxing, to achieve a comprehensive transformation of medical information, and it built a comprehensive information platform integrating medical information management, telemedicine services, and health data analysis. Through this platform, doctors can quickly obtain patients’ medical records and examination results to provide a basis for diagnosis and treatment; patients can also make appointments and query examination reports through the platform, which optimizes the medical experience.
Summary
In the wave of digital transformation, the Modular Data Center, with its unique innovative advantages, has brought a profound change to the data center field and has become a powerful weapon to solve the dilemma of traditional data centers. It not only shows excellent performance in terms of construction cycle, expansion flexibility, energy efficiency, and operation and maintenance management, but it is also widely used in many industries such as the Internet, finance, manufacturing, government, and health care, providing solid support for the digital development of various sectors.
CIMC TLC|RYC|XLC is a leading manufacturer of modular data centers and various other standard and special logistics equipment. With years of experience in the industry, it focuses on the design, production, and distribution of high-quality innovative products that meet the specific needs of customers.
If you need high-quality and innovative logistics equipment, including refrigerated containers, cold chain equipment, containerized equipment integration, modular buildings, etc., CIMC TLC|RYC|XLC is your best choice. We welcome inquiries from customers all over the world and look forward to the opportunity to cooperate with you.