>Modernization | Supplement Modernized by ™ The hidden data The birthplace of Data center Inside Intel: From center sector the Internet surgery fab to data center > Why build new, when > First came AOL, then > Changing a live > They used it to you can upgrade what Infomart; now it's time facility without going build chips. Now it's you already have? for Stack Infrastructure down isn't easy simulating them INSIDE EcoStruxureINSIGHTS IT delivers into your data center architecture. Looking for a better way to manage your data centers in the cloud and at the edge? EcoStruxure™ IT — the world’s first cloud-based DCIM — delivers visibility and actionable insights, anywhere, any time. ecostruxureit.com ©2019 Schneider Electric. All Rights Reserved. Schneider Electric | Life Is On and EcoStruxure are trademarks and the property of Schneider Electric SE, its subsidiaries, and affiliated companies. 998_20464516_GMA-US 998_20464516_GMA-US.indd 1 1/23/19 4:40 PM A Special Supplement to DCD February 2019 Modernized by Contents Giving your facilities a new lease of life Features 4-5 The hidden data ome people want low-investment fixes like airflow shiny new things. improvements). And some center sector Others make a point buildings are such prime locations 6-7 From AOL to Stack of sweating their that there's no choice but to refit. Infrastructure assets and keeping equipment in use Stack Infrastructure is presiding 8-9 Advertorial: Suntil it has more than paid for itself. over a rebuild of a facility once modernize or Neither group is right. owned by AOL in the early days of outsource? When a facility is no longer the commercial Internet (p6), and capable of maintaining its peak a couple of New York skyscrapers 10-11 Data center performance, a full replacement house data centers that have been surgery can be hard to justify, but there will upgraded multiple times. still be plenty of things that can Some industrial buildings have 12-14 Lamda Hellix be done to improve the operation been brought into the data center 15-17 Inside Intel of the building and its contents, fold, in projects which re-envisage without breaking the bank. them as efficient installations for This supplement is about the digital infrastructure. times those choices are made. For example, Intel took a chip fabrication plant in Santa Clara, and Upgrades and modernization turned it into a facility it calls "the are a hidden data center sector, world's best data center" (p15). obscured by the exponential Elsewhere in this supplement, growth in new facilities (p4). And you can read how Lamda Hellix there can also be very good reasons turned a redundant cable landing why an older data center should be station in Athens into a data center simply closed down and replaced, (p12). when its infrastructure ages. 6 Today's data centers are so But it's not just about improving different from those built 20 years the value and performance of a data ago, that it may be prohibitively center. There's a another, higher expensive to completely remake an priority, which raises the stakes older building. even higher: don't kill the services But the pay-back time for you are providing (p10). a new build is longer than an If you've got a modernization upgrade (especially if you include project, we wish you all the best. 10 DCD>Debates Watch Modernizing your legacy data On center - what's new? Demand As soon as you build or acquire a new data center, it starts to become outdated, and with each year that passes, operators are faced with several conundrums - when to upgrade, what to upgrade, and how radically one should upgrade. 15 bit.ly/ModernizingDataCenter Issue 31 • February 2019 3 Modernization - the hidden data center sector New data center projects get all the attention, but there are a lot of facilities that are being upgraded and modernized, reports Peter Judge ata centers are expanding at a mind-boggling rate. The global colocation market is expected to grow to $50.18 billion by the end of 2020, and regional data center Dhubs are adding capacity at record rates. In the US, around 400MW is being built Peter Judge per year, while Europe has been adding Global Editor around 175MW of new data center capacity per year for some time, just in its four largest markets. These figures come from property specialists like CBRE and Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL): speaking at DCD’s London event, Andrew Jay, chief executive of CBRE, said the number of new buildings is increasing, as cloud players buy bigger chunks of capacity: "The big hyperscale guys are talking 500MW in 24 months [in Europe]. That’s a paradigm shift." This is alarming: It’s far more feeding this demand can seem like an effective to impossible task. upgrade a But it may also be blinding us to a facility when it giant sub-sector of the market: namely, only exists on modernization. paper While the industry is concentrating on building new facilities, what happens when the sites we already have need to be upgraded? IT equipment in a data center will need replacing, perhaps every three to five years. The mechanical and electrical parts of the facility have a longer lifetime, perhaps ten to twenty years. 4 DCD Magazine • datacenterdynamics.com Modernization Supplement But during this time, they will also need For a large upgrade, it is likely to be maintenance, and eventually, replacement be necessary to move the IT load out Upgrades in New York and upgrading. And these jobs will impact completely. At this stage, you really are Intergate Manhattan, at 375 Pearl the whole data center. effectively doing a new build. And if you Street, wears its history of upgrades No one seems to have clear figures on find somewhere good to place your IT on a on its sleeve. The 32-story building the size of the upgrade and modernization temporary basis, why not consider keeping overshadowing Brooklyn Bridge was market, perhaps because it is hard to define. it there? first owned by New York Telephone, Some routine work carried out Upgrading a live site is fraught then Bell Atlantic and Verizon. Sabey during the lifetime of the data with difficulties. There are risks Data Centers bought it in 2011, but center can fall into the category to human life here, if active it’s still frequently referred to as the of upgrades: projects such as power systems are being “Verizon building,” because Verizon checking and improving the 450,000 worked on. Even if it is Tier has three floors in the facility and pays airflow by using blanking square feet of III certified and has two naming rights to keep its signage at plates, brush strips and other concurrently maintainable the top of the tower. components. technical space power and cooling paths, Colocation space in New York is Some “upgrades” can at Intergate a planned upgrade will in short supply, so it’s been worth actually take place before the Manhattan involve powering these Sabey’s while to invest in modernizing data center is even built. “It’s down and replacing them the facility. The company originally far more effective to upgrade one at a time. If nothing else, an planned to develop 1.1 million square a facility when it only exists on upgrade can be a good test of the feet of data center space, but Sabey paper,” one professional told me. This is reliability of the facility. vice president Dan Melzer told DCD: much more likely to happen to enterprise Malcolm Howe leads the critical systems “the market just wasn’t ready for that.” facilities, where the project may have a long team at engineering firm Cundall. He spoke Instead, the company fitted out timescale, and the company’s requirements from experience for a DCD feature on data 450,000 square feet of technical space. may change during the planning process, for center life cycles: “Any interruption to power The upper floors of the building were instance, because of a merger or a change in and cooling systems creates risk. You can repurposed as office space - but for business model. work on one path, while the facility hangs off half the tower, this was not possible Some upgrades are more substantial, the other. But you need to choreograph it so as it was built to house telephony either altering the containment plan in the you don’t drop the load.” equipment and has little natural light. data center, or adding capacity by changing The site may need temporary power and The lower floors house the chillers or upgrading the cooling and power cooling during an upgrade, which increases and generators, including an 18MW infrastructure. the risk associated with the procedure. substation to support the company’s Modern IT is likely to have greater Data centers in prime locations may be turnkey customers. power density in the racks, and operators more likely to have upgrades, instead of Re-purposing space has been made are beginning to run their kit at higher being shut down at the end of the lifecycle of easier thanks to the way the building temperatures to reduce their cooling bills. the original build. This is particularly true of was designed. It has a massive freight This means that an upgrade may require data centers in large cities (see box). lift to carry heavy equipment up and different power distribution - and the One more thing is certain about data down the tower, and an underground addition of bigger power feeds - as well as a center modernization: by definition, it will tank holding enough fuel to run change in cooling systems.