According to the World’s Top 10 Largest Data Centres , the Largest Data Centre is Range International Information Hub in Langfang, China, boasting 6.3 million sqf (Equivalent to the size of about 110 football fields). However, all you can see is the data on your 5.5-inch phone screen.
In 2017, approximately 8 million data centers around the world (ranging from small server closets to mega data centers) were handling the data load. They required an astronomical 416.2 terawatt-hours of electricity. That’s 2 percent of total global use, and it’s expected to reach an unprecedented 5 percent of global electricity consumption by 2020.
PUE = Total Facility Energ / IT Equipment Energy
Power usage effectiveness (PUE) is a ratio that describes how efficiently a computer data center uses energy; specifically, how much energy is used by the computing equipment (in contrast to cooling and other overhead).PUE is the ratio of total amount of energy used by a computer data center facility to the energy delivered to computing equipment.
At of the end of 2016, the average PUE of China's hyper-scale data centers was 1.50, and the average PUE of massive data centers was 1.69. The average PUE for hyper-scale and massive data centers which put into operation after 2013 is less than 1.50, and the optimal level is 1.20.
Growth rate of the number of data center and new area of China’s data centers from 2013 to 2017. It can be seen from the chart that China's data center growth rate is gradually slowing down, but the new data center area is increasing.
China's 2018 Data Center Racks Number in Various Provinces (100 thousand)
CHANGES OF DATA CENTER’s RACKS OF CHINA IN 2016~2018 (THOUSAND)
It is illustrated that the scale of racks of data centers of China's metropolis (eg. Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou) grows slowly during the last three years.In comparison, the total number of racks in other parts of the nation (including the surrounding areas of the metropolis, central, northeastern, and northwestern of China) has grown rapidly.
The location of the data center is critical to the business and needs to be considered and weighed against various factors. CHINA ODCC have found that Market Demand, Local Climate, Power Resources, Disasters are the most important factors in data center siting.
We visualize the data on average temperature of major cities across China and try to find the
relationship between temperature and data centers’ location. As shown in the chart, cities with
a greater impact on temperature have lower average annual temperatures, and the minimum
temperature is below minus 10 degrees, which facilitates data center cooling and energy
savings. From the figures shown in the chart, the cities with the largest number of
data centers are not the cities that most affected by the temperature. The location of
these data centers is not directly affected by the temperature.
Based on the above influencing factors, we divide China's data centers into three types: Cost Oriented, Market Oriented and Combined. According to the comprehensive situation of various provinces, Xin Jiang, Gui Zhou, Gan Su, Inner Mongolia, Qing Hai, Hei Long Jiang, Ji Lin and Yun Nan have superior meteorological conditions and abundant power resources. These data centers are mostly cost-oriented, while Tian Jin, Guangdong, Beijing, Shanghai and Liao Ning have a large market demand and Network resources, the construction of data centers are mostly market-oriented. The other provinces like Si Chuan and Zhe Jiang are comprehensive.