DCN May 2016 | Page 20

design & facilities management HOW LOW CAN YOU GO? Traditional data centres are designed for a low PUE rating, but Kevin Brown of Schneider Electric questions whether the impact of the IT load is more important. A s Internet based computing evolves, the data centres that house much of the processing power and data storage will become increasingly important. With an increase for service and 20 computing power, the infrastructure will also become increasingly varied in size and make-up to support the diversification of IT services. This, in turn, will create new requirements for data centres that cannot be realised through a ‘one size fits all’ approach. One consequence is that energy management will become a more complex problem. Among the variables affecting the energy performance of a data centre are its size, layout, utilisation density, type of cooling infrastructure