Cities and power grids are soon becoming data centres

AS DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURES swell around the world to satisfy the appetite for new services, datacentres, too, need to keep pace. Design and build techniques have already come a long way in squeezing costs out of facilities, and the ongoing industrialisation through prefabrication is pushing this further.

Such dedicated datacentre sites will remain critical in the future, yet insufficient to the economically sustain long-term growth. Booming low-cost digital services such as cloud computing, machine-to-machine communication and high-fidelity online gaming put ever more pressure on networks and IT systems to drive efficiency. Next-generation wireless networks, which will cost billions of dollars to build, will only make bandwidth and latency issues even more pressing. Compressing the costs of dedicated datacentre sites cannot completely do away with the overhead of such physical infrastructures: buildings, roads, car parks, and utility connections that all need to be built or upgraded, maintained, secured and operated. This is a costly endeavour. And it is not always just about costs, but limited (or increasingly no) availability of space in high-density and highly regulated metropolitan areas to add core datacentre capacity for growing and new network-bound workloads.

An answer to the challenge is to do the opposite of dedicated sites: spreading out datacentres, as opposed to concentrating them, to allow other infrastructures to absorb the IT load. Also, putting IT capacity exactly where it is the best for the given workload will yield better bang for the buck. This is the embedded datacentre.

By implanting cities with much more IT capacity, content and applications can be brought close to consumers in urban areas, where the world’s population and business are increasingly concentrated. Businesses will be able to add secure and fast data processing using private networks running within or to an adjacent building. Larger high-performance technical computing and analytics will be farmed out to on-grid datacentres. Next-generation cell tower sites will be equipped with compute and storage to provide carriers with added network functions, including compressing and caching frequently used data. Rail networks combined both power and communication lines, making it well-positioned for embedded datacentres.

In many respects, the concept of putting IT on-premises is not new. Many manufacturing and other industrial sites too, prefer to have significant IT on-premises for data capture and control. Server closets and computer rooms in office buildings have been around for decades. Nonetheless, there are some important differences that will set the new generation of embedded datacentres apart - not just technically, but in their more strategic role and potentially large scale installation as well, 451 Research believes.

Prefabricated (manufactured) modular datacentre designs, in general, provide a key technology piece in realising this future. There is a class of prefabricated datacentres that is at the core of this development: micro-modular datacentres (MMDCs). Using industrial packaging techniques IT and telecommunication cabinets can be encapsulated into their own, tight datacentre ‘space’. This does away with the need to create the shared and conditioned room-based environment. Pioneers of the concept include Elliptical Mobile Solutions, a US-based supplier, and Cannon Technologies in the UK.

That is already a major step in repeatability and scalability. The self-enclosed space also does away with wide cold and hot aisles – cabinets can be positioned closer. As a result, a few cabinets combined can already offer substantial datacentre capacity on a very small footprint, with little design and on-site effort.

MMDCs also lend themselves to building integration, as a component of a more strategic and planned approach to embedded datacentres. By using the building’s infrastructure, cabinets can be transported and lifted in place to be up and running (including IT systems) in a plug-and-play fashion in a matter of hours. This integration can run deeper than pre-provisioned space and utility connections. Waste heat from the units can be recycled by the building’s HVAC system for air heating or directed to the pre-heat the hot running water. This can have very significant financial benefits, as well as making the operation more environmentally sustainable.

Many non-residential sites will have critical power infrastructure with backup generation, making UPS systems in the cabinets redundant – newly built commercial high-rises in top tier urban centres tend to be equipped with multi-megawatt critical power systems and redundant feeds. A recent development is 20 Fenchurch Street in the City of London, nicknamed the Walkie Talkie for its shape: the property has two independent 33kV supplies, equipped with four 2.25MVA standby generators and central UPS capacity up to 4.8MVA. It even has a fuel cell installation which produces 300kW electrical output.

With high-density MMDCs, significant amount of IT capacity could be installed on a very little footprint. The combination of multiple embedded sites across city centres could create megawatts of IT capacity for service providers and enterprises. As resiliency is moving into software for more and more applications, site availability concerns will ease and will ultimately open up many more urban properties for potential installation.
It is not just metropolitan areas where embedded datacentres are relevant.

Salt River Project (SRP), a utility in Arizona, is exploring the idea of adding datacentres onto its grid. It partnered with prefabricated supplier Baselayer to develop a docking station concept that will allow adding datacentre modules at power stations and substations. A major benefit is direct and low-cost access to the grid, minimizing the need for backup power. The utility says it can achieve ‘seven 9s’ of power availability, which puts statistically expected site downtime at about 3 seconds per year on average. SRP will own the modules and likely contract out management and sales of the datacentre capacity. Large and computationally heavy workloads (which are also costly to run in traditional sites for their hunger for power) seem to be the best fit.

Equipping telecommunication and cell sites with more IT capacity to optimize network traffic also appears to be inevitable. Video streams already dominate data usage – whether it’s YouTube, a movie, video chatting and conferencing or cloud-based gaming. As users’ demands for picture quality and no interruptions grow, so does the need for more bandwidth-friendly transcoding and network management. At the same time, there is a clear expectation of instantaneous response from web services and mobile applications. 5G mobile networks, still under standardization, aim to achieve one millisecond round-trip times – an order of magnitude improvement over 4G networks. These trends suggest content and some applications will need to be moved closer to consumption.

There are barriers, primarily not technical ones, the industry needs to overcome to realise full-scale adoption of embedded datacentres. The embedded datacenter is a complete departure from prevailing practices and expectation of what a datacenter is and how it looks like. It is unlikely most datacenter operators would seriously consider such options today. There are business barriers too. It will take long-term co-operation and planning between property developers, utilities, telecommunication companies and datacenter operators (and in cases planning authorities too) to build-out a network of embedded datacenters. This could be costly with unclear business value to many.

Still, technical trends and competitive market forces will trigger a change, 451 Research believes. Central datacenters are expensive to use and filling up quickly, making colocation an attractive target market for investors, if only they could find suitable properties. Also, the ability to move workloads and content close to where customers are, boosting overall performance and availability of services without higher costs, would be an advantage for any service provider – the competition wouldn’t be able to replicate it for years. These possibilities should be attractive enough to make at least some property developers, MTDC operators and service providers to consider.
451 Research has conducted a series of in-depth reports on the embedded datacentre. More details can be found at our website: https://451research.com