A Data Center is a special building constructed for the sole purpose of housing computer technology and the infrastructure required for it. The question of when a Data Center is a Data Center is difficult to answer. The scale ranges from the so-called EDGE Data Center with one or a few IT racks, to buildings several thousand square meters in size.Nothing works in our digital society without Data Centers. They are the key and the backbone of the digital transformation. No matter whether we operate online banking, stream movies or music, companies monitor their production facilities or logistics processes. Railroad networks, traffic lights or public lighting systems are also controlled via Data Centers, as are complex scientific calculations, such as in research into the Corona virus. Ultimately, these processes are carried out in one or more Data Centers. For this reason, Data Centers are increasingly classified as critical infrastructure, just like water and electricity supplies.
In a Data Center, everything therefore revolves around the processing and forwarding of data. Everything is realized via the servers and other IT components installed in Data Centers. In addition to the listed application examples for entertainment and science, police or emergency services are just as dependent on the computing power in Data Centers as other federal authorities.
For this reason, the Federal Office for Information Security defines standards for the secure operation of a Data Center. Similarly, standardization bodies, industry associations such as the German Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media (Bitkom e.V.) and international institutes are also concerned with availability requirements, sustainability and the future direction of Data Centers, server rooms and IT infrastructure in general.
Who knows?
- A Data Center needs as much electricity as a municipality with 30,000 inhabitants
- Data Centers consumed 16 billion kWh of electricity in Germany in 2020
- The energy demand of Data Centers has increased by more than 55% from 2010 to 2020, and the trend is still rising sharply
- In Europe, Data Centers consumed more than 87 terawatt hours in 2020, which is more energy than the country of Belgium needs per year
- Streaming a TV series via a streaming service generates 300 million tons of CO2 per season in Data Centers worldwide
These figures once again underscore the place and dependence of Data Centers in our society.
Extensive technology and intelligent solutions are needed to operate these important buildings. In addition to aggregates for cooling the waste heat generated, systems such as emergency power generators, uninterruptible power supply or transformers are part of every Data Center.
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