Creation and upgrade of DPC

Stages of creation of DPC

Process of creation of a data processing center multistage. He turns on 5 main stages:

• Planning – drawing up technical specifications and development of the concept of construction. If there is no this stage, then all idea of creation of DPC is doomed to a failure. Therefore it is necessary to pay it special attention. Organizers in details study the purposes, methods and means for creation of this project, the inner pattern of a complex is defined. When planning regional features and a range of organization activity are considered, economic evaluation and justification of investments is carried out. Finally the site for construction meeting all necessary requirements is selected.

• Designing – approval of all components of DPC for the purpose of creation of a uniform complex and its input in operation. In other words, this solving of tasks, the DPCs delivered at a stage of planning. Also components taking into account loading, determination of a possibility of satisfaction of the current and future requests of business are tested, the forecast of capability of IT infrastructure becomes to answer requests of the developing organization activity in general. Besides, different risks at introduction of DPC to operation and ways of their decrease are calculated. Preparation of the necessary documentation connected with functioning of separate components is executed: equipment, software, engineering systems. All process of designing comes to an end with creation of the project which is approved with the customer and with regulatory authorities.

• Implementation – the most labor-consuming stage in the course of creation of DPC. It comes down to a complete set and delivery of the necessary equipment, installation, implementation of principal components, their testing and creation of an organization structure.

• Operation is a direct service of a complex and the organization of work of divisions. At this stage checks of all systems are regulated. Terms are established depending on type of components. Maintenance of servers is carried out. As a result of scheduled inspections the magazine of scheduled works is filled out.

• Upgrade – the structural and engineering changes of DPC directed to improvement of its work. On statistical data the latest equipment morally becomes outdated till 5 years. For this period the organization develops, its activity progresses, the branch network extends. Respectively also IT requirements increase. For this purpose it is necessary to carry out process of upgrade of IT infrastructure in time.

Let's recognize that the structure of the equipment and the software is defined. The task consists in constructing reliable, safe DPC.^[1]

First, building constructions of the building or future server premises should conform to requirements of standards for bearing capacity of overlappings, a fire resistance limit, etc. Secondly, it is necessary to consider that necessary external communications - power supply of required category, communication channels, etc. should be brought to the platform on which it is going to build DPC. Thirdly, in the building or the premises failsafe engineering infrastructure should be constructed.

The price of a question depends on an initial status of the platform. The most expensive works - providing with the additional electric power, including reconstruction of the existing building electric unit. The cost of engineering infrastructure if changes because of features of the platform, then is, as a rule, insignificant.

It is correct that construction of DPC relied on the known control techniques projects. But at us in the country act only this way when construction - the investment project. Most of owners of DPCs, especially if are about a corporate data processing center or the server room, starts case without excess thoughts: on this floor we have a free premises, so here and will build. Design and exploration work usually is not carried out, economy seems to the customer obvious - the area is already rented or is owned, DPCs or server are located here, it seems badly.

About whether these premises are suitable, and whether it will be easy to equip it with the engineering systems very few people think. It is clear, why. Corporate DPC - in general a product of long evolution. At first one server was enough, then equipped server, then it was expanded, then expanded once more, but any more cannot be expanded - and here decide to build DPC. The question where to build it, is discussed seldom. Of course, in the same building and it is good on the adjacent square.

Often it happens that because of lack of space from office buildings the site of future DPC select, say, the dining room or other premises not too suitable for installation of servers. In practice Insystems were even a case when we had to rebuild under the server premises … a bathroom. Such projects are interesting to the contractor by not triviality, but to the customer, it is necessary to recognize, run into money. Let's tell if water (and in a case with a bathroom as you understand, so it is brought to the premises and was), these communications need to be transferred completely, otherwise the DPC will be under permanent threat of flooding.

When the DPC is placed on the second or higher floor, it is necessary to conduct a research of bearing capacity of constructions without fail. In general, such research should be conducted, even so far as concerns the first floor or the cellar - bearing capacity of the base can be insufficient, especially in buildings of old construction too. If not to organize such preventive check, there is a risk of collapse of overlappings and walls. Servers, cooling systems and back supply weigh much more furniture.

And it is better to conduct a research even then when there are results of earlier researches. If according to documents of ten - fifteen-year prescription the premises wall where it is going to build DPC, should sustain necessary weight, it does not mean yet, as the truth will sustain. Under loading in a wall the crack can be formed, and then it is necessary to strengthen construction in the emergency order moreover and indoors where already delivered the equipment. It will turn out slightly more expensively, than could be.

It is necessary to consider specifics of construction of DPC also. Let's tell, it will be necessary to drill in walls channels of rather large diameter for laying of cables. If not to study feature of the building or the premises in advance, because of it notable shrinkage of overlappings is not excluded. It is necessary to return jacks them into place and to strengthen metal constructions.

Key questions

Power supply of DPC

The system of power supply anyway has the highest priority in planning process of DPC, its operation. It is required to provide necessary power power, to attend to questions of supply of electricity on a case of emergence of emergency situations: arrange additional inputs (ideally - from different transformer substations), to install reserve generators, the systems of uninterrupted supply of electricity.

In parallel with planning and ensuring power, there is a question of placement of DPC again: at arrangement of DPC at the operating office, the lack of capacities becomes one of the most important aspects of life support of a system. Costs for connection of the same additional power can differ many times. It is possible to consider rather economic option if nearby there is an operating substation with a power reserve – it is necessary to provide cable laying only. In other cases reaches reconstruction or construction of the new transformer substation (TS). Here it is important to consider that along with input of power equipment of DPC is required by protection against electromagnetic radiation – with high probability it can lead to damage and data loss, failures in work of an electronic equipment.

In addition, experience of vendor interaction of the electric power says that after the detailed expense estimation and risks connected with arrangement of the systems of power supply, more logical there is a transfer of the platform of DPC on other territory where the supply of power is possible for reasonable cost.

Means of protecting from the fire

Concerning fire extinguishing means of premises and buildings of DPC, standards are rather tough: the equipment of premises the system of automatic gas fire fighting is necessary. Use of water in fire extinguishing systems of DPC is inadmissible because of the subsequent damage to machinery and data.

Use of the systems of gas fire extinguishing requires holding additional actions:

• it is required to provide the mechanism of reset of the excessive pressure arising at operation of a system of suppression and emission of gas fire extinguishing substance;
• equip the premises with the system of gas elimination;
• rules of evacuation of personnel and gas masks are necessary for it.

Restrictions on engineering infrastructure

In DPC there should not be transit communications (heating, a water supply system, the sewerage). However for the premises containing servers there are requirements for air humidity level so availability of water is necessary constantly. The risk of flooding can be prevented by means of a waterproofing, at a construction stage. Nevertheless, installation of sensors of leakages is necessary – they promote prevention of the gulf of the equipment, at probable rushes of pipes of air humidifying systems.

Climatic conditions and ecosystem requirements

Main article: Climatic conditions and ecosystem requirements for DPCs

Technology principles

• Scaling. During creation of DPC it is necessary to consider the resource requirements changing over time. Therefore or use the maximum power of devices, or building block system. It means that in development there is an opportunity to add required modules without replacement of the existing equipment. Such system is more economically reasonable as, as we know, there is no limit to perfection.

• Virtualization. The excellent solution at the lack of space and capacities. With its help it is possible to reduce quantity of items of equipment in DPC. This technology gives the chance to save time for installation of new programs in DPC, allows to isolate potentially dangerous environments and to create necessary hardware configurations. Due to virtualization representation of devices which are not in DPC is reached and also training in work with operating systems is provided. Virtual machines can be united in network.

• Clustering. Necessary basis for uninterrupted activity business of processes. It provides consolidation of several servers in a single system, by installation of program communications between them, coordinates their work, executes redistribution of loading in case of failure in one of servers.

• Reservation. Pledge of the fact that at failure of one subsystem of the center, function it will be undertaken by another, reserve. There is also a concept reserve DPC. It begins to work when the main DPC completely stopped work.

Solution providers

Main article: Infrastructure for data centers (world market)

Expenses on upgrade of DPC

2018: $75 billion investments into hyper scalable DPCs

In 2017 a capital expenditure of operators of hyper scalable data processing centers reached in total $75 billion that is 19% more than rather previous year. Such data in February the 2018th were provided by Synergy Research Group analytical company. 

About 70% of investments into large DPCs were the share of Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and Facebook. Afterwards on the volume of costs Alibaba, IBM, Oracle, SAP and Tencent Holdings were located. Also analysts note the following companies: Baidu, eBay,  JD.com, NTT, PayPal, Salesforce.com, Yahoo Japan and Yahoo/Oath. 

Investments of Alibaba in the data centers in 2017 doubled, and Oracle and SAP increased investments stronger, than on average in the market.

Dynamics of change of a capital expenditure of operators of the largest hyper scalable data centers, data of Synergy Research Group

In a research it is also said that a capital expenditure of owners of hyper scalable DPCs in 2017 corresponded to about 7% of total revenue of the companies. At the same time the share varied from 2% to 17% depending on business type.

In total analysts considered 24 the world's largest cloud and the Internet companies, including the leading service providers of IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, owners of search systems, social networks and services of e-commerce. 

By the end of 2017 the number of hyper scalable data centers in the world grew to 400. The most part of investments of operators goes for construction new and expansion of already started objects.

Hyper scalable data centers generally  use  for development and training of artificial intelligence, work with Internet of Things and in other areas where it is necessary to process a large number of data. Such DPCs, unlike corporate data centers, have thousands and hundreds of thousands of servers, use the homogeneous cloud applicaions which are not demanding high readiness from a single node and are not universal, but specific to a certain company and work in clouds.

According to the analyst of Synergy Research Group John Dinsdale, it is difficult for small players of the cloud market to compete with leaders due to the lack of large financial resources which giants have.^[2]

Trends of upgrade of DPCs

2017

Amdtekhnologiya: 5 key trends of Tsodostroyeniya for 2018

The engineering company of Amdtekhnologiya, the supplier of infrastructure and engineering solutions for DPC, in December, 2017 called the main trends of Tsodostroyeniya in 2018.

As IT became an integral part of development of all sectors of economy, the state program of digitalization and adoption of the Digital Economy program become a logical step on the way of development of the IT industry. If in 2017 the main postulates of the program had rather advisory nature, then in 2018 requirements will become obligatory and will give a certain impulse to development of other directions and trends, consider in the company. So, obviously, there will be a need for DPCs, as in a fundamental part of IT infrastructure and material and technical resources for new products and services.

Standards of creation of DPCs

In 2017 at the state level started talking about input of standards which would regulate key indicators of viability of the engineering systems and considerably simplified drawing up terms of reference to the project and the subsequent acceptance. In 2018 with high probability these standards will be adopted. In Amdtekhnologiyakh predict that production companies at the first stage will be separated into those who managed "be rebuilt", and those who were not in time. Some "repartition" of the market is possible. But the main thing — standards will lead to more transparent selection terms of service providers on creation and service of data centers, the probability of collusion and monopolization will decrease.

BIM (information modeling of buildings)

In 2018 use of BIM technology in design will become final the corporate standard for most large customer companies. It is connected with convenience of work, with increase in transparency of design and construction of buildings of DPCs at all stages — up to commissioning. With the help of BIM it will be possible to avoid many errors which resulted from design of sections by the different companies and to accurately identify the party which made a mistake. It will give a certain anti-corruption effect in the industry — due to detection of solutions which are obviously not entered in the general concept, especially in work on the state order. In opinion Amdtekhnology, in many respects as mandatory standard at design of infrastructure facilities promotes acceptance of BIM the state.

"Green" and energy efficient DPCs

Until recently there were only 2 DPCs of the Tier IV level in the country, and the Tier III level it was possible to count on fingers. As of the end of 2017 Tier III became the lower level of implementation of infrastructure, and energy efficient DPCs became a trend. Russia is not in time behind rates of Europe where "green" DPCs make nearly 50% of the market. Nevertheless, in 2018 among new projects Amdtekhnologiya predict growth of number of "green" data centers by 15%-20%.

In Europe passed to the temperature range of 27-28 degrees Celsius in zones of a "cold" corridor for a long time. Some companies allow and 32 degrees — producers of the server hardware confirm with tests that it is quite working temperature. In Russia these digits still cause shock in the DPCs many companies tenants. At the same time, the question of power saving is all the same brought up and is quite frequent. According to forecasts Amdtekhnology, the planned increase in prices for the electric power can become the driver of growth in this case.

Also it is expected that in 2018 technologies of smart cooling, for example, with LSV (Low Speed Ventilation) will be popular. In such developments thanks to optimum allocation of air flows cooling happens more evenly, and cooling system performance actually adapts to the current loading of the IT equipment that reduces electricity consumption.

Reduction of chains of contractors

The trend on simplification of a supply chain of services was outlined in 2017 — at customers the need for the supplier by the principle of "one window" when one company is responsible for everything — both for design, and for delivery, and for a commissioning, and for commissioning was more and more accurately formulated. In 2018 customers will employ the engineering companies directly even more often, passing general contractors and other intermediaries — less tenders, it is less than problems with interaction, it is less than errors and money spent for nothing, consider in Amdtekhnologiyakh.

Staff shortage

The last years in the industry the lack of the qualitative personnel is noted if 2-3 years ago the companies did not close only 2% of the requirements, then this year this digit grew to 10%. In 2018 significant increase in this indicator — is expected up to 15%. The lack of the personnel is most sharply felt in a segment of middle managers — project managers, the leading architects and so on and also in a top management segment.

Rittal: trends of the market of a tsodostroyeniye

The Rittal company selected a number of trends in the market of data processing centers in Russia. As in August Alexander Nilov, the senior manager of Rittal on products / IT infrastructure told, in the company considered the fact that the Russian market of DPC, as well as world, is subject to the impact of digital transformation in economy and the industry. Besides, formation of trends is influenced by presentation by business of the increasing requirements to processing of a huge number of data and also to infrastructure of data centers and services.^[3]

Speed in construction and service

pre-fab DPCs become one of the main trends in the field of construction of engineering infrastructure, according to the representative of Rittal. For customers not only the quality of work, but also speed becomes a crucial factor. Pre-fab of DPC is completely developed on production — all tests are passed at the plant, and the client receives the ready-made solution with the thought-over infrastructure where all components, such as racks, control of a microclimate and electrodistribution, represent the uniform ready module. Servers, network equipment and storage systems optionally are included in the delivery. At the same time a full stroke of construction of modular DPC, beginning from design and finishing with start, can take only 6-8 months.

Rittal also noted a trend on construction of commercial data centers against the background of which cloud services develop. Data center as service — the profitable solution as allows business to receive high-quality infrastructure for smaller money. Clients of commercial data centers receive the whole range of services: from computing powers and data storage to network equipment. Commercial modules gather on the plant, are tested, can be scaled under the required areas and are delivered in a short time. Modules include a control system of a microclimate and an electrodistribution equipment and also all accompanying systems necessary for operation of the IT equipment.

However, not all customers are ready to pass to commercial data centers and cloud computing because of specifics of business or domestic policy of the company. In spite of the fact that services of commercial data centers gain steam, there is a number of tasks and models of use of DPC which assume construction of own computer centers, Alexander Nilov specified.

Smart production and data protection

According to Rittal, data protection in Russia is based on two principles — reliability of the engineering equipment and work of system administrators, i.e. protection against network threats. Russia is able to create good solutions and there are excellent examples of DPCs with various levels of reservation, uninterrupted power, conditioning systems, engineering snabzheniye, etc. However very few people think directly of physical personal data protection, noted in the company.

For example, it is possible to construct reliable DPC, but if it is located on the first floor of the building, under all other infrastructure of the company, then in case of technical accident, for example, break of pipes of water supply, all engineering structure of similar DPC it will be absolutely senseless.

In the European companies at the level of standards it is registered as the equipment from influence of external factors should be protected. The system of insurance of DPCs on a case of destruction of crucial information of the company is developed.

According to experts of Rittal, soon the companies and in Russia will begin to pay more attention to physical protection as clients began to impose more strict requirements to DPCs. First of all, this quality and reliability of the solution when the client is confident in characteristics and technical requirements to adjacent subsystems. The second requirement — stability of manufacturing company in the market. It is not enough to sell the equipment, it is important to provide high-quality customer service and the help in engineering. Especially at a pre-sale stage the customer expects technical assistance, consultation, calculation of the additional hardware. If the equipment custom (in DPCs, as a rule, there is a lot of custom engineering equipment), delivery dates, logistics, customer service and the subsequent aftersales service, for example, availability of spare parts and technical support are important.

Summarizing, it would be desirable to note that every year requirements of customers to the equipment and service grow — it stimulates producers to develop new solutions, to optimize the existing equipment, to invest in research and development, to increase the level of the rendered service and engineering — Alexander Nilov, the senior manager of Rittal on products / IT infrastructure concluded.

2015: Beginning of transition to a resource-centrichnoy to architecture of DPCs

Main article: Disaggregation of servers and its reason

In 2014-2015 unexpectedly for the majority transformation of ideas of what in the long term should be hardware infrastructure of DPCs began. Still quite recently about something other, than the servers installed in 19-inch racks (rack server or rack-mounted), and the speech could not be. It is easy to integrate them in physical clusters that allows to minimize the volume of network equipment, the occupied space, simplifies cooling and it is rational from the economic point of view.

But, since 2015, at this seeming firm paradigm the alternative was outlined, still soft junction from the developed cluster servero-centrichny architecture of DPCs (server-centric architecture) to a resource-centrichnoy to architecture (resource-centric architecture) began. Read more here.

Notes