Undoubtedly, in the era of digital economy, data has been incorporated into "new factors of production", and the data center, as the key to carrying the value of data, is not only an important infrastructure for the development of the national economy, but also an entity of technological innovation and technology application. It is precisely because of this that the data center industry has achieved rapid growth in the past ten years and has become a veritable key "base" of the digital world.
But we must also see that while data centers are growing exponentially, they are also facing more and more challenges, mainly reflected in: Driven by the goal of "carbon neutrality", data centers are moving towards "low-carbon" and "Greenization" is not only the trend, but also "imminent"; in addition, with the advent of the era of artificial intelligence led by ChatGPT, higher requirements are placed on the agility, availability and reliability of data center deployment and delivery. Therefore, data centers not only need to have a higher level of intelligent management, but also need to have rapid deployment, elastic expansion, and comprehensive and sustainable development capabilities.
So, how to resolve the current challenges and build a future-oriented next-generation data center? At the "Data Center Energy Industry Sub-forum" of the 2023 China Digital Energy Ecology Conference held a few days ago, Huawei gave the answer - that is, around "Green, Simple, Smart, Reliable )” and for the three scenarios of “large DC, small and medium DC, and key power supply”, Huawei strives to build a future-oriented data center through continuous innovation and leadership, and builds a solid data center “base” capability for the digital world.
As Sun Xiaofeng, President of Huawei's Data Center Energy and Key Power Supply Business, said: "For the future, Huawei's data center energy will continue to innovate, focus on value creation, and create minimalist, green, smart, and safe low-carbon data center solutions for customers, helping customers business success.”
Data center, the road to change
It can be seen that as the whole society accelerates into the era of low-carbonization and digital intelligence, the market is also calling for new digital industrial energy infrastructure. Specifically, in the field of data centers, several significant changes can be found:
First, the continuous growth of computing power has put forward higher requirements for the construction mode of data centers. On the one hand, in the field of cloud data centers, according to Canalys' prediction, China's cloud infrastructure service spending will increase by 12% in 2023. The diversification of business also makes the requirements of enterprise users for cloud services more complicated, and the demand for customization continues to increase; On the other hand, in the field of supercomputing and intelligent computing, the emergence of artificial intelligence, especially large-scale models, continues to increase the high-density data centers. Taking the newly released GPT-4 model as an example, its parameters are based on GPT-3 With a hundredfold increase, the demand for computing power will increase several times. These new demands will undoubtedly pose higher challenges to the construction and response of the data center.
Second, with the continuous advancement of the "carbon neutral" policy, the "extension" of the entire green and low-carbon is constantly expanding. Indeed, driven by the goal of "carbon neutrality", the data center industry will undergo profound changes in the future, and "low-carbonization" will become an inevitable trend, while the large-scale application of clean energy at the source side and the promotion of high-efficiency and energy-saving technologies in use, And the application of carbon-saving technologies such as waste heat reuse in the recovery stage will also be popularized in data centers.
Third, the security and reliability of data centers have become increasingly critical. As the "base" of the digital world, data center infrastructure is not only the physical basis for carrying massive amounts of data, but also the key guarantee for the normal operation of today's society and economy. Therefore, security can be said to be the "lifeline" of a data center. More importantly, as the data center has increased from a few hundred cabinets to thousands or even tens of thousands of cabinets, and the number of applications carried has changed from thousands to tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, this also makes the data center System resilience and security assurance have become even more critical.
It can be seen that the future data center will not only move towards a new stage of "green and low-carbon" development, but also need better overall planning, improve operational efficiency, ensure safety and reliability, and achieve green and sustainable development. An innovative road that fully supports the high-quality development of thousands of industries.
Four characteristics, three scenes
According to Fei Zhenfu, President of Huawei's Data Center Energy Domain: "To achieve high-quality and sustainable development, next-generation data centers must have four characteristics, namely green, minimalist, intelligent, and safe."
The so-called green is mainly reflected in three dimensions, including "high efficiency and energy saving, high density and land saving, and full-chain carbon". The core and key of "low carbon"; simplicity, mainly reflected in the simplicity of deployment and maintenance, especially the rapid development of artificial intelligence computing power, which puts forward more requirements for the flexibility of rapid deployment, while prefabrication and Modularization is the best way to achieve simplicity; intelligence refers to "automatic operation and maintenance, self-optimization of energy efficiency, and autonomous operation". The core is to promote data centers from passive response in the past to automatic fault identification and manual tuning; , including "active security, architectural security, and network security", which requires "end-to-end" innovations from components to hardware, from hardware to systems, to improve the security and reliability of data centers.
In addition, different scenarios such as large-scale DC, small and medium-sized DC, and key power supply also put forward different requirements for products and solutions. To this end, Huawei has created a series of brand-new products and solutions through continuous technological innovation in the past few years, hoping to better meet the application scenarios of different data centers in a "adapted to local conditions" approach. Specifically:
First, in terms of the next-generation power supply system, Huawei has built an extremely reliable power supply system around "high-density, high-efficiency, and intelligent chain iPower". Taking Huawei's latest FusionPower power module 3.0 as an example, it realizes component integration, simplified links, and creates a "land-saving, efficient, and reliable power supply and distribution system"; in addition, a large number of layered customization and productization The solution also makes users more worry-free. By providing "intelligent chain iPower" technology to achieve predictive maintenance, it can use artificial intelligence to change key components and key nodes from passive response to predictive, and finally let the power supply and distribution system realize "power saving, labor saving and maintenance saving". Save time."
Second, in terms of the next-generation temperature control system, Huawei has achieved the ultimate energy efficiency of the data center through "maximizing the use of natural energy, distributed cooling architecture, and intelligent iCooling". Among them, Huawei's new-generation indirect additional cooling solution has achieved "extreme energy saving, fast delivery, reliable architecture, and minimal O&M" through the technological innovation of "cooling and power integration, and direct connection to backup power". The data center lowers the PUE requirements and greatly reduces the cost of data center operation and maintenance.
Third, in terms of next-generation prefabricated data centers, Huawei has created the ultimate TTM through "full decoupling of architecture, modularization of subsystems, and intelligent operation and maintenance." Among them, the prefabricated architecture created by Huawei not only matches the 50-year architectural-level lifespan through the "building-level stacking" method, but also has the characteristics of high security and high exit rate. The innovation of "full decoupling architecture" It realizes the fully prefabricated modularization of subsystems, thus also meeting the requirements of "on-demand deployment" of data center users.
Fourth, in terms of next-generation small and medium-sized data centers, Huawei has created extreme simplicity through "integration of simplicity, continuous cooling, and active security". For example, integrated simplicity refers to the fact that Huawei can help small and medium-sized data center users realize "simplified site selection, simplified deployment, and simplified operation and maintenance"; Intelligent and other means can reduce the PUE value of the data center from 1.6 to 1.1. At the same time, through the innovation of integrated setting and continuous cooling, the PTM has also been greatly reduced.
Fifth, in terms of key power supply, Huawei ensures the stable and high-quality development of the data center through "full modularization and intelligence". Among them, Huawei UPS500-H fully modular product, through the "blessing" of AI technology, can achieve extreme security and has stronger adaptability; while Huawei UPS2000-H is extremely simple, extremely reliable, within 3 minutes Automatic parameter matching can be realized. In addition, through mobile intelligent management, the UPS of the entire network can also be mastered in real time. In terms of backup power system, Huawei launched Smart Lithium Battery 3.0, which has "high density and land saving, safe and reliable, mixed use of old and new, and Expansion" and other advantages.
It is not difficult to see that around the four characteristics of "green (Green), minimal (Simple), intelligent (Smart), and safe (Reliable)", while facing the three major scenarios of "large DC, small and medium DC, and key power supply", Huawei uses technology The continuous innovation of solutions and solutions provides reliable support for data centers to go green and low-carbon, and provides a solid guarantee for the high-quality development of digitization and intelligence in thousands of industries.
Continuous innovation, leading the future
Through technological innovation and focus on scenarios, Huawei's data center-oriented products and solutions have been widely used in various industries. Data shows that by 2022, Huawei has delivered more than 1,000 large-scale data centers around the world, and delivered more than 1.8 million cabinets, reaching 16GW, supporting the stability and efficiency of user data centers in industries including operators, finance, government, education, and medical care. run.
Not only that, its modular UPS has also achieved the No. 1 global market share for 7 consecutive years; prefabricated modularization has achieved the No. 1 global market share for 7 consecutive years; smart micro-modules have achieved the No. 1 global market share for 5 consecutive years; indirect evaporative cooling solutions (EHU) has also achieved the No. 1 market share in China for two consecutive years. Behind this "transcript", it can be said that it also reflects Huawei's technological innovation strength and capabilities in the data center field.
Looking forward to the future, on the one hand, Huawei will focus on innovation leadership, and continue to launch innovative products and solutions in the digital center energy field by combining power electronics technology, digital technology, Huawei's watt technology, and energy storage technology with cloud and AI technologies. plan to drive the industry forward simultaneously.
On the other hand, Huawei is also accelerating the creation of a digitally intelligent global high-quality service system that matches digital energy business scenarios, and collaborates with and enables partners to create safer, full, and efficient delivery, and achieve high-quality "CARES" operations and Intelligent operation and maintenance continue to create full life cycle value for customers.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. It can be seen that the current "carbon neutral" strategy has set off a broad and profound economic and social change, which means a revolution in energy production and energy consumption, and will also be a new opportunity for all walks of life to upgrade and replace. The data center industry has undoubtedly come to the "forefront" of innovation and change.
In the process, in response to the new development trend of next-generation data centers, Huawei has integrated the core concepts of "minimalism, greenness, intelligence, and security" into its serialized, modularized, and intelligent data centers and energy solutions. , not only better meet the application scenarios such as "large-scale DC, small and medium-sized DC and key power supply", but also really promote the high-quality and sustainable development of the data center. Its value: "It is not only about the present, but also about the future .”
Shenyao's Science and Technology Observation was founded by a senior technology media person, Shenski, who has 20 years of experience in dissemination of enterprise-level technology content. He has long focused on the observation and thinking of industrial Internet, enterprise digitalization, ICT infrastructure, and automotive technology.
