The latest developments in technology oriented towards mission critical environments, and the maturity of Data Center deployments taken on in the past few years have propelled the existence of a wide variety of options to impulse the expansion of these facilities, which have been identified by the main players in the industry. All of it, through options that grant IT managers a greater flexibility regarding the possibilities in the scalability of their infrastructure.
This reality can be observed both in new buildouts, as well as in already operative environments. It is possible to face the expansion of the service capabilities for final clients from diverse aspects: trough IT densification – needing lesser space to install equipment in a critical facility – or the usage of topologies which enable modularity in the critical systems.
Scalability planning for data centers
Thus, the people responsible for planning the dimension and scalability levels in Data Centers face a great challenge in the Brazilian market: the growth rate forecasts in this market, specially dealing with an extremely dynamic sector.
Once the maximum potential of a new project is defined, scalability helps improving the investment return, easing the segmentation of the investment according to the demand. In addition, scalability is a powerful tool for the Colocation provider towards being aligned with the market’s necessities. Primarily because of the capability to incorporate the latest technology when implementing any capacity expansion, while being assertive when providing an adequate service to its clients.
Edge Data Centers
Nevertheless, while the sector has evolved, new challenges have been unveiled, such as Edge Data Centers, which are being increasingly demanded as 5G and IoT are implemented in our society. Due to the necessity of being closer to the applications, these Data Centers usually have surface and energy limitations, in addition to logistic restrictions caused by their location. In these cases, and having to commit a lesser investment to build this type of facilities, the solution comes through building another Edge Data Center, rather than expanding an existing one.
Last, there are other aspects that must be considered when evaluating the scalability capacity of Data Centers. On one hand, Covid-19 pandemic has put a special pressure to improve IT infrastructures, which has derived in a demand increase; on the other, there have been barriers in the access to supplies, which has difficulted the previsions on delivery dates. Facing this scenario, it is extremely advantageous not only to have the necessary densification technology available, but to count with the adequate topology which allows a modular and flexible growth, as is the case of Nabiax’s Data Center of Tamboré.
Tiago Tognozi, Data Center Manager Brasil