Hello everyone, I am Xiaozao Jun.
In the last article, I introduced to you the development process and internal structure of the data center. Today, I will add a little more content and tell you about the construction process of the data center.
Before introducing the construction process, it is necessary for us to understand the service provider of the data center.
█Data center service provider
Although the data center is an infrastructure, it is not completely state-owned. It can also be private, built and operated by private companies. However, according to national regulations, an Internet data center operating license is required to provide data center services.
Generally speaking, data center service providers are divided into three types of companies.
The first category is telecom operators, namely China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom.
They are large state-owned enterprises with strong financial strength, a large number of talents, a lot of resources in their hands, and rich experience in infrastructure construction. They are the leading force in the domestic data center market.
Take China Telecom as an example. As the largest IDC service provider in China, they have 794 data centers and more than 500,000 racks, the largest number and the widest distribution.
The picture comes from the Internet
The second category is cloud computing service providers, such as Ali, Tencent, Huawei, etc.
These service providers themselves carry out cloud computing business, so they build a large number of data centers by themselves or jointly. They are very professional in the construction and operation of data centers, and have strong technical strength.
Taking Ali as an example, they have deployed hundreds of cloud data centers in 25 regions around the world, and have multiple super data centers in Zhangbei, Heyuan, Nantong, Ulanqab, Hangzhou and other places, with an investment of hundreds of billions.
Picture from "Times Weekly"
The third category is third-party service providers specializing in data centers, such as Wanguo Data, 21Vianet, Sinnet, Baosight Software, CICC Data, Aofei Data, Dataport, etc.
They provide services to customers by building their own data centers or renting operators' data centers. They are not limited to the network and geographical restrictions of a single telecom operator, and can provide relatively balanced network egress. At the same time, their services are more flexible, and they are good at providing customized services according to the needs of customers.
According to different sales methods, third-party data centers are divided into retail data centers and wholesale data centers .
Retail data centers provide relatively standardized server hosting services and network bandwidth services for small and medium-sized Internet companies, general enterprises and other customers. The wholesale data center provides customized services for large Internet companies, cloud computing manufacturers or telecom operators, and generally uses modules as the smallest rental unit.
█Construction of data center
After talking about the service provider of the data center, we can look at the construction process of the data center.
The construction of a data center is a highly specialized project that requires strong resource integration capabilities. In chronological order, data center construction inevitably includes a series of professional projects as follows:
1. Site selection;
2. Land, electricity, water, energy assessment, environmental impact assessment, etc.;
3. Feasibility study
4. Project approval;
5. Schematic design and construction drawing design;
6. Bidding and procurement of general contracting of engineering construction, and supervision and bidding of procurement;
7. The division of professional subcontractors, procurement of engineering subcontractors and procurement of major equipment;
8. Civil engineering;
9. Electromechanical installation;
10. Equipment debugging;
11. Acceptance and delivery.
Needless to say, in the data center site selection stage, each data center service provider will plan the site selection of the data center according to its own needs and external conditions (temperature, geology, natural disasters, power resources, and energy consumption indicators).
In the early days, large Internet companies required "three centers in two places" to deploy data centers.
The so-called "three centers in two places" refers to the production data center, the same-city disaster recovery center, and the remote disaster recovery center. In this mode, the three data centers in two cities are interconnected. If a data center fails or suffers a disaster, the other data centers can operate normally and take over key businesses or all businesses.
Later, with the development of the times, the requirement of "two places and three centers" gradually evolved into "more activities in different places".
"Multi-active in different places", as the name suggests, is to build multiple data centers in multiple locations, and data can be synchronized in two directions between three or more data centers. This is a high-availability deployment architecture with strong anti-risk capabilities.
After the site is selected, work such as environmental impact assessment and feasibility report is completed, the project is successfully approved, and then the design phase can begin.
The picture comes from the Internet
The design of a data center is very complex, there are many factors to be considered, and a large number of professional design tools will be used.
Data Center Planning Ideas
The design work includes not only the overall conceptual design of the building and park, but also the detailed design of each subsystem of the data center. It is necessary to output the design planning and construction drawings of each detail to facilitate subsequent construction.
After the design is completed, it enters the real construction stage.
The construction process will not be introduced one by one. It is nothing more than civil construction, installation of supporting equipment and facilities, installation and commissioning of main equipment and facilities, etc.
Every detail of the construction process is regulated and constrained by corresponding standards in the country. All formal construction units can basically meet the requirements.
Several common construction steps
After everything is completed, the owner will organize various inspections and acceptances. After the acceptance is completed, the data center will be officially opened and transferred to the operation and maintenance stage.
█What are PPP, BOT, EPC?
The traditional engineering construction mode is very complicated for the owner. The owner not only has to form a construction team including various professional and technical personnel, but also has to face an extremely complex construction process with cumbersome work and a long time period.
Normally, no owner will do all the work by himself. They will call out tenders, select partners, and complete the construction work. After the completion of the data center, some customers will also choose to hand over the subsequent operation and maintenance services of the data center to a third party to reduce their burden.
In recent years, there have been many infrastructure projects in our country. In order to facilitate rapid construction and delivery, there are some new project management modes, including PPP , BOT , agent construction mode , project management mode , etc.
PPP mode, that is, Public-Private-Partnership (government and social capital cooperation), the government adopts a competitive method to select social capital with investment, operation and management capabilities, and the two parties sign a contract in accordance with the principle of equal negotiation, and the social capital provides public services. The public service performance evaluation results pay consideration to social capital.
The second is the BOT model, that is, Build-Operation-Transfer (Build-Operation-Transfer), which is a way for private enterprises to participate in infrastructure construction and provide public services to the society.
The above two models are generally suitable for social public services, and are often used by the government for infrastructure construction such as roads and bridges. The characteristics of their projects are often large investment, long construction period, and slow return on capital. For the construction of independent IDC operators Not suitable for data centers.
For the construction of data centers, the most popular ones are agent construction and EPC .
The agent construction model, as the name suggests, means that the owner invites bids to find a professional agent construction unit to be responsible for the investment management and construction of the project. After completion, it will be handed over to the owner, who will pay a certain percentage of management fees.
The reputation of EPC is even greater. Its full name is called Engineering-Procurement-Construction, which means "design-procurement-construction". (Xiaozao Jun’s Note: There is also an EPC in the core network, which is the name of the network element, which is different from this.)
EPC, also considered a "Turn-key" model
It is a general contracting mode. The owner contracts the construction project to the general contractor, and the general contractor undertakes the design, procurement, and construction of the entire construction project, and comprehensively monitors the quality, safety, construction period, and cost of the contracted construction project. Responsible.
In the end, the general contractor submits to the construction unit a construction project that conforms to the contract, satisfies the function of use, meets the conditions for use, and has passed the completion inspection and acceptance.
If you have done decoration, you know that there are cleaning, half-package, full-package and other modes in the decoration. EPC is a bit like all-inclusive. The decoration company will handle everything for you, which saves worry and trouble.
In terms of cost, although EPC is not necessarily the cheapest, but adopting the EPC model, the cost risk of the owner will be much smaller. After bidding for the EPC general contract, the owner's expenses are expected. The cost risks caused by design, procurement and coordination errors are borne by the EPC general contractor.
Large-scale general contractors can comprehensively mobilize resources, collect sporadic equipment procurement needs of projects across the country, conduct centralized procurement negotiations, and control prices and supply chains through scale, so as to control the total investment and achieve low quotations for EPC contracts. Realize the win-win cooperation between the owner and the EPC general contractor.
█ Epilogue
Well, the above is some basic introduction about data center construction.
Thank you for your patience in reading, see you next time!
—— The End ——
references:
1. General procedures and industry standard requirements for data center construction, Sohu.com;
2. my country's IDC development is ushering in a new climax, and the EPC model makes construction more efficient, blue flood;
3. How to use EPC mode to achieve fast delivery, IDC circle;
