The document summarizes 10 trends predicted to shape data center facilities by 2025: 1. Power density of 15 to 20 kW/rack will be predominant as CPU and server capacity increases. 2. Data centers will require scalable architectures to support evolving IT over 10-15 year lifecycles. 3. The average PUE of new Chinese data centers will drop to 1.1 as energy efficiency, reduction, and sustainability become greater challenges.

1. Perspective
February 25, 2020
Corresponding author
Heiko Joerg Schick
Copyright © 2020 Huawei
Technologies Duesseldorf
GmbH. All Rights Reserved.
Ten predicted trends shaping data centre
facilities
Heiko Joerg Schick1
1Huawei Technologies Duesseldorf GmbH, Riesstraße 25, 80807 Munich, heiko.schick@huawei.com
PERSPECTIVE
Abstract
The 2025 Huawei trend forecast gives you the lowdown on data centre facilities five years from now.
Keywords: Huawei, trend forecast, data centre.
From 2010 to 2019, the data centre industry experienced exponential growth. The move towards
hybrid IT continues as the balance between on-premise facilities, colocation and cloud services
become more pronounced. The rapid development of new technologies such as artificial intelli-
gence, cloud computing, big data, and 5G brings further growth and drive ever-increasing market
demand. To meet this demand, data centres must solve construction challenges to build at speed,
scale, manage energy usage and costs in a sustainable way. Besides, data centres also face many
challenges in terms of architecture, flexibility and operations and management. The following
trends look at how we meet this challenge as an industry and drive towards this future.
1 High density
CPU performance and server capacity keep increasing with the evolution of IT computing capacity.
As the demand for AI applications also increases, the importance of AI computing power grows in
parallel. Data centres development targeting high density to balance efficiency and costs. Currently,
the average power capacity in a data centre is 6 to 8kW/rack. The power density of 15 to 20kW/rack
is going to be predominant in data centres by 2025.
“Power density of 15 to 20 kW/rack is
predominant in data centres by 2025.”
2 Scalable architecture
Generally, the lifecycle of IT devices is 3 to 5 years, and the power density doubles every 5 years. The
lifecycle of data centre infrastructure, however, is 10 to 15 years. The data centre facility undergoes
IT evolution for the next 2-3 generations. Scalable expansion and phased investment for optimal
CAPEX for the lifecycle of the data centre is required. Also, the data centre must support the hybrid
deployment of IT devices with different power densities because of the execution of diversified IT
services.
3 Green
Currently, the power consumption of data centres accounts for three per cent of the world’s total
power consumption. The total power consumption of the data centre reaches more than 1,000TWh
by 2025. Energy-saving, emission reduction and operating expense (OPEX) reduction are significant
challenges. Increasing power usage effectiveness (PUE) of data centres and building sustainably
1

2. is imperative and inevitable. It is an irresistible trend to use clean energy and waste heat to save
resources (such as energy, land, water, and materials) throughout the lifecycle of the data centre.
The average PUE of a new data centre in China is dropping to 1.1 in the next five years.
4 Quick deployment
Internet services usually spike in a short period; data and traffic demands on the service side
increase sharply. Therefore, data centres must deploy out quickly. On the other hand, the data
centre is changing from a support system to a production system. A faster rollout, therefore, means
faster benefits. The typical trailing twelvemonth (TTM) of a data centre is 9 to 12 months, which
decreases to less than 6 months in the future.
“The average PUE of a new data centre in
China drops to 1.1 in the next five years.”
5 Full digitisation and AI-enablement
The software-defined, intelligent data centre is upon us. With the continuous improvement of
IoT and AI technologies, data centres are gradually evolving from single-domain digitisation in
terms of operation and management, energy-saving and operation, to full-lifecycle digitisation and
automatic driving in terms of planning, construction, optimisation operation and manafement. AI
is going to be widely adopted and applied.
6 Full modularisation
More data centers will be constructed in full modular mode to address the problems of slow con-
structionandhighinitialinvestmentcosts. Modulardesignsevolvefromcomponentmodularisation
to architecture modularisation; finally achieving full modularisation of the data centre. The fully
modular design enables fast deployment, flexible capacity expansion, high energy efficiency and
simple operation and management.
7 Simplified power supply architecture-lithium batteries becoming the norm
The power supply and distribution system of a traditional data centre is complex and fragmented;
it occupies an enormous footprint, and it is challenging to locate faults. A simplified power supply
architecture reduces power conversion times, shorten the power supply distance and footprint,
improve the space utilisation rate and enhance system energy efficiency. Compared with lead-acid
batteries, lithium batteries have advantages in terms of footprint and service life. As the cost of
lithium batteries decreases, lithium batteries seeing a widely used in data centres in the future.
“Full modularisation of the data centre
mboxenabling fast deployment, flexible
capacityexpansion,highenergyefficiency
and simple management and operation.”
Heiko Joerg Schick | Perspective 2

3. 8 The convergence of liquid cooling and air cooling; more indirect evaporative
cooling and less chilled water cooling
GPU and NPU applications generate an increasing demand in high-density scenarios, and liquid
cooling systems are becoming more and more popular. Some storage and computing services
however, are still in low-density scenarios. To quickly adapt to uncertain IT service requirements
in the future, the cooling solution must be compatible with the air cooling system and liquid
cooling system. Besides, the complex architecture of the chilled water cooling system hinders
quick deployment— and smooth operation and management. An indirect evaporative cooling
system, with a modular architecture, shortens the deployment time and simplifies operation and
management. Also, by fully utilising the natural cooling resources, the power consumption of the
cooling system is going to be significantly reduced. In areas with a suitable climate, the chilled
water system is replaced gradually by an indirect evaporative cooling system.
9 Dynamic linkage between bits and watts
Reducing PUE doesn’t mean that the overall energy consumption of the data centre is optimal.
Instead of focusing on the data centre energy facilities, the energy consumption of the data centre
needs to be evaluated and optimised as a whole. Through full-stack innovation among facility,
IT, chipsets, data, and cloud, bits and watts are going to work collaboratively to achieve dynamic
energy-saving and optimal energy efficiency of the entire system.
10 Trustworthiness
As the data centre facility becomes more intelligent; the network security threats are getting more
complicated. The data centre must have six features: resilience, security, privacy, safety, reliabil-
ity, and availability to prevent attacks and threats from environments and malicious personnel,
including network intrusion threats.
“Reducing PUE doesn’t mean that the
overall energy consumption of the data
center is optimal. Instead of focusing on
the data centre energy facilities, the
energy consumption of the data centre
needs to be evaluated and optimised as
a whole.”
Heiko Joerg Schick | Perspective 3