The huge increase in demand for online information and transactional services forces companies to concentrate as much processing power and memory as possible in each data center cabinet.“For example, multi-U servers, which used to be standard, are being replaced by 1U “pizza-box” type servers, and even these are giving way to blade servers, providing an effective density of many servers per U,” explains Goulding.
The result is that heat density is estimated to have increased from less than 1 kW per rack to between 2 and 5 kW; in the case of high-end equipment, it goes far beyond that, up to 20 or even 30 kW.
This has made heat dissipation the number one problem that will dominate the design of cabinets and racks for data centers throughout 2012 and beyond.
“One thing we can be sure of this year is that conventional cooling approaches won’t be enough,” says Goulding. “More sophisticated processes like aisle cocooning are necessary, and it’s vital to install cabinets whose cooling capacity can be easily upgraded over the life of a data center.”.
Other key factors for data center cabinets and their racks in 2012 will be access and security, and much more advanced software for controlling cabinet functions.
Yesterday's simple security features, such as passive key-operated locks or even code-operated locks, will no longer suffice. Techniques like iris or fingerprint recognition will become commonplace, as will practices such as time-limited access. Alarms, backed by closed-circuit television and offering comprehensive audit trails, will also be widely used. End users are increasingly demanding, requiring proactive security measures within hosting data centers.
Next year we will see cabinets installed that are powerful processing centers in themselves, so controlling their functionality with advanced management software tools will be crucial.
“Dedicated tools, such as Cannon DCM data center management software, will be necessary,” Goulding says. “These tools bring new kinds of benefits, such as planning capabilities, what-if design, and task management.”.
