In this white paper, we will look into: • The changing face of the colocation buyer • Industry structure, including mergers and acquisitions • The Internet of Things and big data • Edge computing • Cloud computing and Internet Giants • The impact of data center infrastructure management (DCIM) • Data center design architectures

Open Compute has had a significant impact on the thinking about data center design. Until now, the focus has been on systems at the rack level, leaving unanswered questions about the power infrastructure upstream of the rack. In this paper, we address critical questions about the implications of Open Compute on the upstream power infrastructure, including redundancy, availability, and flexibility. We introduce simplified reference designs that support OCP and provide a capital cost analysis to compare traditional and OCP-based designs. We also present an online TradeOff Tool that allows data center decision makers to better understand the cost differences and cost drivers to various architectures.

Open Compute has had a significant impact on the thinking about data center design. Until now, the focus has been on systems at the rack level, leaving unanswered questions about the power infrastructure upstream of the rack. In this paper, we address critical questions about the implications of Open Compute on the upstream power infrastructure, including redundancy, availability, and flexibility. We introduce simplified reference designs that support OCP and provide a capital cost analysis to compare traditional and OCP-based designs. We also present an online TradeOff Tool that allows data center decision makers to better understand the cost differences and cost drivers to various architectures.

Standardized, scalable, pre-assembled, and integrated data center facility power and cooling modules provide a “total cost of ownership” (TCO) savings of 30% compared to traditional, built-out data center power and cooling infrastructure. Avoiding overbuilt capacity and scaling the design over time contributes to a significant percentage of the overall savings. This white paper provides a quantitative TCO analysis of the two architectures, and illustrates the key drivers of both the capex and opex savings of the improved architecture.