BCS Breakfast Club debates legacy data centre issues

Simon Harris, Director of Critical Infrastructure at BCS, kicked off the meeting by inviting the room to share their views and experience around the subject of what to do with the considerable stock of legacy data centres to be found across the UK and Europe and the options available to ensure they remain relevant in this age of accelerating digital transformation. This was followed by a lively discussion with topics that included acquisition, refurbishment, upgrading, disposal and demolition of these vital parts of our digital infrastructure.

What is driving the Refurbishment of Legacy Sites?

The Group discussed the benefits of refurbishing existing facilities which included sustainability, resource utilisation and speed to market. It was felt that the commonly experienced risks of site clearance and new construction has already been addressed and that in some cases the legacy facilities have underutilised power availability with consequential missed expansion and revenue opportunities. In addition, smaller former enterprise sites can be in good locations for edge deployments and finally there are savings to raw material resource utilisation and consequential carbon emissions when compared to new build, - an important ESG consideration which was discussed in further depth later in the session.

Several participants felt that refurbishment was a much more viable option for existing live operations than to demolish and rebuild because of the importance of assessing how existing customers would be best served alongside the need to honour existing contracts. As a result, it was felt that some organisations are looking to upgrade purely to support their clients and address concerns that aging equipment may cause outages rather than to upgrade to attract new ones and become AI ready. In short, they are wanting to squeeze out more efficiency rather than looking at future scalability.

However, in many cases an upgrade and refresh to critical infrastructure could liberate trapped electrical capacity for deployment to serve higher density and growing IT loads, for example through UPS replacement or cooling solution changes. These types of interventions will be more easily accommodated in Tier III facilities having two concurrently maintainable power and cooling paths, although the work will require careful planning and right first time execution. Nevertheless, such a solution overcomes the power availability challenges and takes the facility down a path towards better PUE performance.

What are the risks?

Amongst the group there was agreement that any form of major upgrade or refurbishment has risks as it is done in a live environment without impacting existing operations. There were several shared stories of complex, unplanned issues that were uncovered mid project due to a lack of information!

However, it was noted that a number of legacy sites are located on prime land with good power connections so there is real value in refurbishing them if the risk can be managed although some felt strongly that it was simpler and more cost effective to build new facilities and that these were easier to manage.

Others were concerned about the lack of experienced people that are needed for a complicated, multifaceted refurbishment project. This was perhaps unsurprisingly given the well documented skills shortage and it was clear from all the participants that this is a problem throughout the supply chain. Some felt that this was even worse in mission critical projects which required a high level of engineering experience. This was described as a ‘dearth of expertise’ and there was further discussion about how to attract new young people into the sector whilst acknowledging that some progress is being made through investment in UTC, STEM, apprenticeships and T levels.

The Carbon tax is coming…

There was a discussion about the sustainability benefits of modernising legacy data compared to building a new one where a substantial amount of the construction work involves the use of energy dense concrete and steel to such an extent that refurbishing an existing facility can save in the order of 70% - 80% of the carbon cost of a new build.

However, for legacy sites, energy efficiency is often a significant challenge. Older data centres were not designed with energy conservation as a high priority, leading to excessive power consumption and higher operational costs. This is not only financially burdensome but also environmentally unsustainable. With the growing emphasis on green computing and corporate responsibility, organisations are under pressure to upgrade their facilities to be more energy efficient.

A potential carbon tax for the industry by the UK government was discussed along with a warning that “it is coming, and it will be substantial – so get ready’. It was agreed that the opportunity to make the most of the embedded carbon in legacy data centres may encounter a challenge as it is hard to measure and there is currently no industry standard although it is likely that the Government will implement some. The dynamics of Scope 4 emissions were also discussed and how these might impact the sector overall.

Conclusion

The session concluded with an agreement of the challenges of balancing cost, risk and sustainability alongside the needs of today, tomorrow and the future. It was felt that each facility needed to be reviewed on a case by case basis as every one is different and there are challenges across finance, engineering, logistics, risk management and access to resources. At BCS we have helped many clients navigate potential pathways for transformation and innovation to deliver the best possible outcomes to modernise their digital built assets.