An Overview of Prefabricated Modular Data Centers

Data center is rapidly evolving. From a typical brick and mortar store to prefabricated modular structures, the infrastructure has become agile and efficient as ever. With time, IT and facilities professionals have come up with innovative ideas that helps design dynamic facilities to meet the increasing demand. The concept of modular data centers emerged some years back and the market has settled with it.

Modular Data Center

Modular infrastructure uses prefabricated modules that are preassembled at a factory. However, there are distinct types of prefabricated modular data centers in the market. Prefabricated is further classified into three categories: data center space, electrical infrastructure and mechanical infrastructure.

Containerized data centers: These types of data centers look like a container and the size are similar to that of an actual container for easy and convenient transportation. The container comes along with Preinstalled cooling system and Cisco stands as an example of this. In addition, multiple standard footprints are available that administer several concepts of the freight container. The ideal size makes it easier to disassemble, ship and reassemble that tends to save installation charge than the non-standard size.

Enclosure: Better known as metal houses, shells and pods are smaller than the container, but demands high transportation and handling cost including extreme on-site work in case it requires full assessment at the location. However, it can support the IT capacity and the layout of the equipment within the pods that increase flexibility. While there are numerous enclosure accessible for outdoor installation and resistant to fluctuating weather conditions, there also other some that are meant for indoor purposes. Even the outdoor equipment might be installed indoor for varying purposes. So this type works if the IT professionals want to protect the data center from the hazardous internal environment.

Skid-mounted: As the name suggests, the machinery is permanently mounted over a skid, which can be on a frame, metal pallet or rails. It is built for indoor use, as the components use to manufacture this data center is not resistant to the outdoor environment and thus, power modules performs outstandingly. Because of fewer capacity constraints, it is capable of support larger capacity data center.

Benefits of Prefabricated Data Center

A fully functional modular infrastructure can be installed within a time span of 14 to 20 weeks rather than years. This lets outgrowing businesses to address their needs by setting up a new data quickly and within budget or upgrading the existing one as per requirements. Listed below are some of the benefits:

Reduces high capital expenditure in terms of designing, planning and building.
Standard footprints of the containers enables uses energy efficiently, while also lowers cooling and related expenses.
Capability of upgrading the data center whenever more capacity is required.

All of the things combined, makes prefabricated data centers highly preferable option for IT managers that are finding approaches to address the rapidly changing IT scenario.