High, Mixed, and Variable Density Needs an Adaptive Data Center

Quick take

  • Customer-driven demands dramatically increase the variability of workloads and density demanded of the data center.
  • Meeting the needs of business is about data center infrastructure that keeps up with the demands of digital transformation, supporting high, mixed, and variable density without stranding capacity.
  • At Aligned, we can support high, mixed, and variable density without reconfiguring the rack layout or adding any additional cooling systems.

Customer-driven demands on the digital world dramatically increase the variability of workloads and the density demanded of the data center.

Customers are more involved than ever in how businesses deliver products and services. They expect convenience, personalization, speed, efficiency, seamlessness, ease, authenticity, and affirmation. And they expect anytime, anywhere interactions – which means digital and mobile.

In order to support those demands, data center infrastructure must change. A new white paper by Aligned, High Mixed, and Variable Density Needs an Adaptive Data Center, explains how data center infrastructure must – and can – become more adaptive to meet the demands of the digital world.

Business, IT, and Data Center Response to the Age of the Customer

The effects of our anytime, anywhere world are felt across industries. It impacts not only how we do business, but also the tools and technology that support business. Business, IT, and data center infrastructure have all responded to keep up, but not at the same pace.

“Data center infrastructure must become more adaptive to meet the demands of the digital world.” – Click to Tweet

Business: Business is responding to customer demand and delivering in ways we could hardly have imagined even just a few years ago. From connected homes, to precision oil and gas exploration, to integrated healthcare, to smart farming, and so much more, enterprises are stretching their boundaries in response to customer demands and in search of new opportunities.

IT infrastructure: IT infrastructure and software have helped make this digital transformation happen. Businesses are unleashing technology’s power to create not only new platforms and services, but also to develop the new business models and strategies required to scale and sustain them.

One of the key characteristics of digital transformation is data – massive amounts of it being captured, processed, and analyzed. High performance computing (HPC), artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), and Big Data applications are at the same time products of and producers of the data explosion.

“To catch up with tech advances by business and IT, the data center must become more adaptive.” – Click to Tweet

Data center: All that data lives in the data center, yet data centers have been slower than business or IT to embrace change. As much as technology has changed and the need for high, mixed, and variable density has grown, the data center hasn’t changed much at all (with the exception of hyperscale data centers). Data centers as they’re traditionally built and run are not agile, responsive, or scalable.

But that is changing. To catch up with tech advances by business and IT, the data center must – and can – become more adaptive.

Data centers can be adaptive

A data center’s ability to support high density or ramp up and down in response to workload demand is driven by how dynamic its infrastructure is. Most data centers can support high-density servers, but the only way to ensure that they don’t overheat is to either half-fill the racks or spread them apart or introduce other inefficiencies.

Supporting high, variable, or mixed density is about the ability of the data center cooling system to deal with all the extra heat generated by high density servers without compromise.

Developing new approaches 

Aligned’s patented heat removal system responds to the shifting data tide, supporting high, mixed, and variable densities within the same row.

Our cooling infrastructure by design makes it easy to scale density vertically. In addition to frontend infrastructure which is pre-commissioned, pre-installed, and tested at scale, data center components are modularized and factory-built so that incremental capacity is very quick and easy to add.

“Aligned’s patented heat removal system responds to the shifting data tide, supporting high, mixed, and variable densities within the same row.” – Click to Tweet

Our cooling system can handle much higher delta Ts than is typical because instead of forcing cold air into the data hall, our system removes the heat at its source, with heat sinks close-coupled with the server racks.

For the full details about how Aligned data centers support high, mixed, and variable density, from 1 kW to 50 kW per rack, download the new whitepaper,

Download The Whitepaper