Why regionals firms must opt for small-sized and edge data centres

For decades, data centres were regarded as the nexus of the network and a fundamental requirement of digital economies. For enterprises, the data centre was the heart and muscle of IT. The emergence of the cloud further emphasised the central importance of the modern data centre.

But with the arrival of 5G and Internet of Things (IoT), there are rumblings of change that IT decision makers are focusing on small and edge data centres, backed by the increasing need to locate more capacity and processing power closer to end-users.

As its name suggests, a small and edge data centre contains the same power, cooling, connectivity, and security features as a centralised data centre, but on a smaller scale. In addition, IT deployments in small edge data centres handle the processing, data analysis and data storage of applications, users of those applications and the devices that use them.

Lower latency

The next decade will produce interconnected technologies that will continue to transform and automate our daily lives, including 5G mobile networks, self-driving vehicles, and smart cities and factories driven by IoT and industrial IoT devices. However, to fully exploit the potential of these technologies, we still need to overcome some key technical constraints, mainly latency.

The solution to reduce latency lies in small-sized and edge data centres, which make IT resources closer to users and devices. Localised computing, data storage, and data analysis provide higher application performance and reliability.

It is predicted that 75 per cent of data generated by enterprises will be processed at the edge within the next four years. The growing desire for real-time interactions is driving businesses to bring computing power closer to end-users.

Small and edge data centres are making appearances in several industries and scenarios including:

Retail: Small and edge data centres can exist within retail outlets as retailers try to close the gap between selling online and at brick-and-mortar locations.

Manufacturing: Edge data centres are deployed in distribution warehouses to manage growing inventory and shipping data as well as within factories to manage data generated from sensors and communications between equipment, contributing to a growing industrial IoT.

Telecom: Central offices of telco companies are being converted to computing rooms and used as edge data centres to make their networks more dynamic.

Modular data centre solutions

Modular data centres can quickly provide required IT services and provide space for future expansion, enabling enterprises to adapt to technology development and real-time service requirements. The modular data centre solution has the following features and is the best choice for small and edge data centres:

* Ease of deployment: Modules can be delivered complete with equipment racks, uninterruptible power supply (UPS) equipment, batteries, switchgear, cooling equipment, and monitoring systems. The modules can be ganged together as required for larger sites.

* Cooling: Modular data centres can be designed for a variety of cooling options, based on the needs, including in-row cooling and in-rack cooling.

* Power: Modular design elements include utility power hookups, standby generators, UPS modules, and power distribution, which are all deployed to ensure uptime.

Huawei launched its Smart Modular Solution for small and edge scenarios, including three kinds of products (FusionModule500/ FusionModule800/ FusionModule2000), suitable for different industrial needs.

All the products are highly integrated, come in a modular design and can be business-online within four hours.

With SmartLi UPS – Smart Lithium batteries UPS – inside, data centre footprint can be reduced by 50-70 per cent. Also, a rack-mounted cooling system can ensures the reliable working of IT devices.

Huawei solutions support unified management of multiple DCs and can evolve to the future cloud for unified management.

Shuiyu is the vice president，Marketing and Solution Sales，Huawei Digital Power, ME