How Hyperscale Data Centers Address Changing Demands

Money, identities, books, art, movies, appliances, medical devices, automobiles… it seems as though there’s a digital version of almost everything these days. Technology futurists refer to this trend is the “digitization of the world” or the “digitization of everything.” It’s the notion that almost any process, activity or thing can be converted into some form of useful data. Of course, this requires someplace to capture, store, organize, monitor and analyze all that data. This trend is one of the foremost reasons analysts are predicting substantial growth of hyperscale data centers (HDCs) over the next few years.

HDCs are enormous facilities designed to support massively scalable IT infrastructure (Storage, Network and Compute). Once devoted almost exclusively to research and development activities, they’ve become standard for data-heavy cloud and social media companies which ingest millions of data events every second.

Hyperscale Market Booming

According to Synergy Research Group, there are only 700 hyperscale data centers in existence today — less than 0.01 percent of the more than 7 million data centers worldwide. However, this number is twice as many as there were five years ago, and Synergy expects the installed base to surpass 1,000 by 2025 with another 314 HDCs currently in the planning or construction phase. Here are some interesting statistics around HDCs for consideration…

– The U.S. accounts for about half of all current worldwide HDC capacity as well as a majority of the facilities in the pipeline. While Amazon, Microsoft, Google, IBM, and Meta own much of the current capacity, companies across a variety of industries increasingly require hyperscale capabilities.

– The HDC market is expected to reach a global value of $585 billion by 2030, up from $59 billion in 2020 according to recent analysis by ResearchAndMarkets.

There’s no great secret as to what’s driving this growth. It’s estimated that 94 zettabytes of data (roughly 94 trillion gigabytes) were generated in 2022 alone. Additionally, it is anticipated HDC data volumes will continue growing by 40 percent annually, largely driven by machine-generated data from connected devices, sensors and processors. Increased use of artificial intelligence and machine learning in manufacturing, energy, agriculture, healthcare and finance are also creating more and larger digital workloads. Widespread use of video streaming and video conferencing add to the load.

Processing, Efficiency and Scalability Advantages

The storage and processing requirements for such workloads are beginning to surpass what’s possible in traditional data centers. Where a typical enterprise data center might have 50 server cabinets and occupy about 1,500 square feet of floor space, HDCs have a minimum of 500 cabinets and 10,000 square feet — although they tend to be much larger. Some exceed a million square feet and have thousands of servers.

HDCs also have important power, connectivity, and cooling advantages that contribute to maximum efficiency. Most are designed for critical power loads that exceed 100 megawatts, and many report near-perfect power usage effectiveness (PUE) ratios of 1.1. Newer HDCs use Enhanced next-generation fiber networks and distribution which support data rates up to 400Gbps to increase data throughput and maximize bandwidth. HDCs also feature highly efficient cold-aisle containment systems, or are employing newer technologies such as Rear-Door Heat exchangers (RDHx) which can provide up to 200kW of cooling capacity to a single cabinet, to maximize cooling efficiency.

Massive scalability is perhaps the defining characteristic of an HDC. Flexible compute, memory, networking and storage resources can be adjusted to meet any workload requirement. HDCs can scale either horizontally by adding more network and storage or vertically by adding more computing/server resources to existing infrastructure.

Increased digitization is driving explosive data growth and changing how organizations use IT services to collect, analyze and use that data. Meeting these demands requires massively scalable, flexible, and efficient data center architectures that can instantly expand and contract
to meet fluctuating needs. Contact us to learn how you can leverage our comprehensive portfolio of data center services to meet your evolving business requirements.