Huawei Digital Power held the Next-Generation Data Center Facility Seminar on April 12, 2022. The event brought together nearly 200 technical experts from Colo, large enterprises, carriers, consulting firms, and research institutions across the globe to exchange ideas on three key topics, such as the definition of next-generation data centers, innovative power and cooling solutions, and how to achieve data center facility automation.
Charles Yang, Senior Vice President of Huawei and CEO of Huawei Data Center Facility, said in his opening remarks “As carbon neutrality becomes a global consensus and the digital economy expands, the data center industry is facing the challenges of high energy consumption, huge carbon footprint, difficult operation and maintenance and low reliability. In response to these challenges, data centers will have to embrace changes in the service form, its role in energy supply, and operation and maintenance models. Huawei will conduct in-depth discussions with customers and industry players to grasp market trends timely and jointly promote the green and sustainable development of the industry through continuous innovation and investment.”
Topic 1: How to define the next-generation data center facility
Sanjay Kumar Sainani, Global Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Huawei Data Center Business, suggested that with the skyrocketing growth of data volume and computing power, the next-generation data center will evolve toward a green and low-carbon design, elastic capacity expansion, rapid deployment, modular, simplified architecture, and sustainability.
Industry experts at the event reached a consensus on key performance indicators for data centers of the future: In addition to the extensively used Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), other key metrics, including Carbon Usage Effectiveness (CUE), Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE), Space Usage Effectiveness (SUE), Grid Usage Effectiveness (GUE) and lower life-cycle pollutant emissions, will also affect the future of the industry. The next-generation data center facility features high renewable energy utilization, high energy efficiency, high reliability, and highly intelligent management.
Topic 2: Power and cooling technology innovations for next-generation data center facilities
The power supply and cooling systems are key parts of data center facilities. Experts at the meeting believed that the next-generation data center facilities will adopt the ultra-simplified power supply architecture, the lithium-ion battery, natural cooling, and liquid cooling. Given that renewables will become the dominant source of energy, the development of low-carbon data centers with “Generation-Grid-Load-Storage” Synergy will be the mainstream direction. In addition, with the development of heat recovery technologies and policies, data centers are expected to transform from energy-consuming centers to energy-supply centers.
Topic 3: How to achieve data center facility automation
Finally, when it comes to data center facility management, experts said digital technologies would be further integrated with power supply and cooling systems to facilitate predictive maintenance, resulting in improved system reliability. Intelligent technologies are also leveraged to optimize energy efficiency for the ultimate PUE. In the era of carbon regulations, digital twin technologies will help data centers achieve visualized and accurate carbon management throughout their lifecycle.
Collective intelligence is pooled to illuminate the future of data center facilities. Fei Zhenfu, CTO of Huawei Data Center Facility, concluded that Huawei would continue to make breakthroughs in data center facility solutions, join hands with partners to build an open and win-win ecosystem, and jointly usher in the next generation of data center facilities.
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