Besides these tech giants, other major enterprises and startups alike use data centers to house the volumes of data they accumulate on a daily basis, from CRM databases to sensitive company files.
Did you know that 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created everyday? Or that more than 3.7 billion people use the internet each day? That’s a lot of information to process and store. To meet the growing demands of our data consumption, we rely on data centers. Companies like Facebook and Google put an increasing strain on their own data centers to sustain and manage the websites and apps we use on a daily basis.
Besides these tech giants, other major enterprises and startups alike use data centers to house the volumes of data they accumulate on a daily basis, from CRM databases to sensitive company files. To keep pace with this ever growing trend, there are over half a million data centers worldwide, and there will only be more in the future. But not all data centers are created equal: Because data centers are resource-heavy facilities, architects strive to create environmentally friendly designs that utilize the renewable energy sources around them.
For example, Google’s data center in Hamina, Finland, is equipped with an on-shore wind park to generate power. The data center also has an advanced cooling system that utilizes the seawater from the Bay of Finland to keep its systems cool.
When prospecting a fitting location for data centers, available land, infrastructure, and a viable workforce are considered. Microsoft’s data center in Dublin, Ireland, for instance, covers 303,000-square-feet and takes advantage of the island’s cool natural climate to maintain the consistent, cool temperature needed for its hardware.
Other facilities are located underground and some even have roofs made entirely of plants. As more data centers are created, and renewable energy sources become more accessible, we will likely see some more creative solutions to data center design in the years to come. If you want to see some of the most creative data centers out there now, check out Varonis’s infographic below.