Data center as utility service provider
Data is a valuable commodity. But are data and applications available without interruption even in times of power shortages? How do data center operators deal with the energy crisis and what impact does it have on companies?
Data centers, which house a large number of systems and thus also store huge amounts of data, must be fully prepared for many emergencies and interruptions, including power shortages, and ensure seamless operation. At the Green, Federal Councilor Ueli Maurer gained insight into how the Swiss data center provider ensures business continuity and sustainable data center operations at the end of October 2022.
How data centers can become power plants
Switzerland as a data location plays a central role due to increasing demand from international cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, Google and Microsoft. According to Green, Ueli Maurer sees this as a great opportunity for Switzerland. Therefore, he said, politicians must do everything possible to continue to guarantee legal security and ensure the reliability of system stability. Ueli Maurer sees an interesting benefit of the extensive and expensive emergency power supply of data centers in connection with power shortages: "When we have a power shortage, we need everyone. That's where data centers can make a very important contribution. They have a lot of capacity that they could feed in."
Making the existing diesel generators available in the event of a power shortage is also a concept Green is positive about, he says. More than 80 percent of the total energy consumption in a data center is attributable to hardware operation, says Roger Süess, CEO of Green. Large data centers are already so highly optimized that they consume less than 20 percent of the total energy for cooling, security and equipment. The approach should therefore be virtualization, more efficient hardware, or outsourcing of systems.
Source: Green.ch/editorial office
