Enabling Growth with a Hyperscale Data Centre

Around the world, enterprises are turning to digital transformation (DX) to create value and amplify core competencies. To compete effectively, they are adopting agile development methodologies and embracing the cloud to deliver new capabilities and innovate at a faster pace.

CIOs and infrastructure managers realise they need flexible, scalable systems to support these initiatives. This calls for a rethink of their existing infrastructure and technology stacks, and a new strategy to deliver heightened automation and efficiency for the future.

A perennial bugbear of traditional IT systems is the slow and often clunky process of acquiring, installing, and configuring the requisite infrastructure for each new application. And while public cloud platforms promise to ease much of the lead time for rolling out new systems, they are not always optimal for due to industry-specific regulations, data locality, legacy applications, and a desire for certainty around operational expenses (OPEX).

Fortunately, converged and hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) makes it possible to quickly deploy the requisite capacity and support new projects in a cloud-like fashion. Though these systems reside within a colocation environment, the private cloud offers the ability to seamlessly allocate and configure the resources assigned to various DX projects. Upgrading is also simple and typically entails adding new system appliances and managing the new capacity through the same management console.

Given its convenience over the laborious installation process of traditional servers, it is unsurprisingly that worldwide converged systems market is growing. Indeed, the segment reached US$4.2 billion in Q4 2019¹ and is forecasted to continue growing globally at a CAGR of 13 per cent from 2020 to 2025².

Within data centres, this trend, coupled with increasingly powerful server chips, are driving demand for higher power densities. With tightly integrated compute, storage, and networking capabilities, converged and HCI systems draw more power and run hotter than standard standalone servers occupying the same amount of rack space. Unfortunately, furnishing the added power and cooling capacity can be an issue for existing data centres.

While existing data centres can support a higher power density by diverting power capacity earmarked for adjacent areas, this presupposes that spare power is available. This is not always the case when upgrading an existing deployment in an older facility. Moreover, provisioning the additional cooling for these more powerful systems might delay the project unacceptably with the installation of more cooling units.

Envisioned with high-density systems in mind, hyperscale data centres are designed to support the complex multi-cloud and converged infrastructure paradigm that enterprises demand today. With high cooling efficiency and ample power capacity, even demanding next-gen systems such as high-performance computing (HPC) is readily supported in a hyperscale data centre.  

There is more to a hyperscale data centre, of course. Built to a much larger scale, such facilities also benefit from advantages such as better economies of scale for optimal energy efficiency. Innovative and highly efficient cooling systems serve to further reduce energy use, resulting in a Power Usage Efficiency (PUE) that is lower than traditional data centres.

A successful infrastructure deployment is not limited to the hardware or facility, though. Having a robust and reliable network is equally vital. This includes the basics such as a diverse network path to the data centre, to the presence of ample connectivity options to support advanced enterprise requirements such as database replication and business continuity.

As a top telecommunications provider with a strong local and international network presence, StarHub offers a wide selection of networking solutions. This includes direct connectivity to key nodes across Singapore, wide area network (WAN) connectivity to corporate offices or backup data centres, as well as private network routes to the top public cloud platforms.

Whether deploying hybrid environments where private and public clouds operate seamlessly with legacy systems or building high-density mission-critical environments designed around high availability and scalability, a hyperscale data centre offers the power, reliability, and energy efficiency to support your needs.

Learn more about how you can accelerate your business performance and confidently deploy next-gen workloads with StarHub’s hyperscale data centre.

¹ IDC, Worldwide Converged Systems Market Grows 1.1% Year Over Year During the Fourth Quarter of 2019

² Orbis Research, Global Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Market-Growth, Trends, and Forecast