Cos’è un data center hyperscale?

Hyperscale data centers are massive business-critical facilities designed to efficiently support robust, scalable applications and are often associated with big data-producing companies such as Google, Amazon, Facebook, IBM, and Microsoft.

But what makes a hyperscale data center different from a regular data center?

A data center, in short, is a dedicated space or building that houses an organization's IT equipment and servers. The company can draw on its data center resources to operate its business or serve those resources up to the public as a service.

Enterprise data centers and hyperscale data centers can be compared using their scale and performance.

Hyperscale data centers are significantly larger than enterprise data centers, and because of the advantages of economies of scale and custom engineering, they significantly outperform them, too. Not by any means an official definition, a hyperscale data center should exceed 5,000 servers and 10,000 square feet.

What further distinguishes hyperscale data centers is the volume of data, compute, and storage services they process. In a survey, 93% of hyperscale companies expect to have 40 GigaBytes per second (Gbps) or faster network connections. In the same survey, 51% of respondents report that the bandwidth needed to manage vast volumes of data is an increasing challenge.

Comparing their power usage effectiveness (PUE) metrics (although, comparing PUEs between data centers is not always apples to apples,), most enterprise data centers commonly report and average data center PUE between 1.67-1.8. However, Google hyperscale data centers report a PUE of 1.1, where a PUE of 1.0 means perfect efficiency. From a performance standpoint, the comparison is very much like a full-size sedan versus a zero-emissions vehicle.

Hyperscale is also a term that embodies a computing system's capability to scale, at orders of magnitude, to meet tremendous demand. So hyperscale data centers are exceptionally agile, with the ability to scale up, down, and out to meet any load they service. This can mean adding more compute power, as well as adding more machines, or the ability to scale out to the edge of a network.

Essentially, hyperscale data centers compete "not just [on] scale [alone] but also [on] a certain approach to building and managing infrastructure, emphasizing stripped-down hardware, maximum disaggregation (components can be mixed and matched), modularity, automation, and other principles."

I 5 data center hyperscale più grandi

Nel 2021 si contavano più di 600 data center hyperscale. Per comprendere davvero le dimensioni di un data center hyperscale, confrontiamo la definizione convenzionale, quella che prevede 5.000 server in 929 m², con le caratteristiche dei cinque data center hyperscale più grandi e vediamo in quale regione sono attivi.

L’Inner Mongolian Information Hub

• Superficie totale: 994.062,528 m²
• Di proprietà di China Telecom, l’Inner Mongolian Information Hub è il più grande dei sei data center presenti a Hohhot.

Hohhot Data Center

• Superficie totale: 715.353,408 m²
• L’Hohhot Data Center di China Mobile è il secondo per dimensioni; anch’esso si trova nell’Information Hub di Hohhot.

Il Citadel Campus

• Superficie totale: 668.901,888 m²
• Situato nel nord del Nevada, il Citadel Campus è il più grande data center del mondo; appartiene alla società tecnologica globale Switch. È alimentato da energia rinnovabile al 100%, fino a 650 megawatt (MW). Il campus garantisce una latenza di 4,5 millisecondi (ms) a Silicon Valley, di 9 ms a Silicon Beach e di 7 ms a Las Vegas.

Range International Information Hub, Langfang, Cina

• Superficie totale: 613.160,064 m²
• Situato a Langfang, in Cina, tra Pechino e Tianjin, il Range International Information Hub è un super data center di quarta generazione progettato in collaborazione con IBM.

Switch SuperNAP, Las Vegas, Nevada

• Superficie totale: 306.580,032 m²
• Anche il SuperNAP è di proprietà di Switch; si trova a Las Vegas. Il SuperNAP è alimentato con energia green al 100%, fino a 531 MW.

Ulteriori informazioni sul sito vertiv.com.