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What is a Managed Data Centre?

By Blog, Thought Leadership

Data centres are the core part of our modern world. They are responsible for keeping the world connected by providing a hub for storing, processing and sharing data and applications.

Today, global IT spending on data centres has reached $222 billion, showing just how important these have become for supporting the everyday functions of society as a whole. In short, the world would look very different without the power of data centres.

However, what actually is a managed data centre? In this guide, we’ll discuss the critical components of these data centres, how they’re managed, and how they work.

What are the key components of managed data centres?

The U.S. makes up the bulk of the world’s data centres, with more than 2,700 data centres located in the country, followed by Germany with less than 500. Despite this imbalance, the industry is growing fast in every major developed nation, including the UK.

Within a managed data centre, you’ll find the same standard components as in any other type of data centre, including:

✔ Servers
✔ Networking equipment
✔ Storage technologies
✔ Cooling systems
✔ Software
✔ Cabling/power infrastructure
✔ Physical security

What separates a managed service data centre is the customer-facing interface that serves as the customer management platform.

What is a managed service data centre?

Managed data centres are the core of Data Centre as a Service (DCAAS) packages. The purpose of these data centres is to provide the physical infrastructure to clients to manage their data processes.

While these data centres contain the same infrastructure as any other type of data centre, the goal is to outsource the computing power of each centre. The benefits of managed service data centres include providing flexible, scalable and affordable data centre capabilities to businesses and public services.

The popularity of managed service data centres has exploded recently, with the industry expected to reach $600 billion by 2026. In other words, by removing standard data centres’ logistical and budgetary constrictions, managed service packages allow businesses to stay in business.

How do managed data centres work?

Managed data centres are ideal for organisations lacking the space, staff or expertise to deploy an on-site IT infrastructure that serves their needs. Instead, outsourcing your data and IT operations to the experts is a sound choice so that you can concentrate on managing your business.

Within a managed data centre, the process works like so:

  1. The client will lease a dedicated server, storage or networking hardware.
  2. The client has full use of their leased hardware/software.
  3. The managed data centre is responsible for administration, monitoring and management.

However, a similar type of data centre is the colocation facility. Under this model, the client company owns the infrastructure and rents a dedicated space within the data centre. If opting for the traditional model, you’ll be responsible for maintaining this hardware.

This however, is often impractical for most companies due to the remote nature of data centres and the risk of outages. This is why many colocation facilities offer management and monitoring services.

Tasks involved in data centre management

Data centre management involves overseeing computer systems and the information passing through these systems on behalf of clients. A dedicated manager and their team monitor all management responsibilities. Again, the majority of these tasks may be managed 100% remotely.
So, what are the primary tasks involved in managing a data centre?
While every type of data centre serves a different market, the components and running of a managed data centre are largely similar. Moreover, failure in any area could lead to data loss, outages and loss of consumer confidence.

Data Backups

Managed data centres often provide backups and form part of disaster recovery contingencies for UK SMEs. The manager must ensure the integrity and availability of these backups.

Troubleshooting

Large scale computing environments require constant troubleshooting to prevent problems and maintain uptime.

Supervising Technicians

Despite the comprehensive automation that has streamlined today’s data centres, on-site work remains necessary, mainly when dealing with hardware. Part of a manager’s role is to supervise technicians in the course of their work.

Managing Cybersecurity Systems

Managed data centres are under near-constant attack from bad actors; therefore, data centre management must revolve around keeping state-of-the-art cybersecurity systems in check.

Forming a Physical Security Plan

Physical security is also a concern. Today’s security systems may still rely on human security guards, but most internal systems are electronic, including CCTV cameras, biometrics and more.

Supporting Data Centre Integrity

The components that make a data centre work also create new challenges. For example, managers must formulate cooling and cabling strategies to prevent outages.

Data centre monitoring

Monitoring makes up the bulk of operating a data centre. Business clients are paying first for the infrastructure and second for peace of mind.
Your goal in monitoring a data centre is to maintain its health and ensure it reaches its peak potential. Simultaneously, data centre monitoring ensures that the facility complies with external and internal regulations.
A combination of manual and automated tools are deployed to achieve these goals. While data centres have yet to reach 100% automation, most key functions can be managed remotely without human input.
On a side note, while many use the terms “monitoring” and “management” interchangeably, they’re not strictly the same.

Challenges of data centre management

Growing complexities within modern data centres also create unique challenges for the teams operating them. As part of designing and building a data centre, teams must account for these challenges to construct an infrastructure that overcomes them.
Failure in any one area can lead to a catastrophe. Today’s average data centre downtime cost is $740,000, 50% higher than in 2010, so prolonged downtime can cost millions.
So, what are the challenges you need to be aware of?

✔ Power management
✔ Capacity planning
✔ The role of the Internet of Things (IoT)
✔ Data security
✔ Real-time reporting
✔ Balancing efficiency and cost controls

On top of these challenges, data centres must tackle the problem of evolving government regulations. These concerns must be addressed domestically and globally to ensure that you give clients and the general public the confidence they need when sharing and using data.

At Keysource, we specialise in helping organisations to overcome the challenges of sustainable data centre design, building and management

Speak to our team today for tailored advice and guidance on creating and operating a data centre fit for the next generation of computing.

Contact us
7 August 2023

Keysource and Deep Green Win DCS Award – Edge Project of the Year

By Blog, News

Keysource and Deep Green are proud to announce that we have won the Edge Project of the Year award at the DCS Awards! This recognises our innovative approach to data centre design and construction, which uses sustainable technologies to reduce energy consumption and environmental impact.

Project Overview

An innovative start up Deep Green has seen the heat generated by a data centre used to heat a Devon public swimming pool. The computers inside the white box are surrounded by oil to capture the heat – enough to heat the pool to about 30C 60% of the time, saving Exmouth Leisure Centre thousands of pounds. The data centre is provided to the council-run centre free of charge and the leisure centre’s electricity costs for running the “digital boiler” will also be refunded.

Sean Day, who runs the leisure centre, said he had been expecting its energy bills to rise by £100,000 this year. “The partnership has really helped us reduce the costs of what has been astronomical over the last 12 months – our energy prices and gas prices have gone through the roof.”

The future of the data centre has to be at the heart of communities, contributing too, rather than detracting from local communities. We can do this as part of an integrated planning process, leveraging the heat for district heating, support local community services like swimming pools or even as part of new residential and commercial developments.

Rishi Sunak recently highlighted the £800m investment in supercomputing, and what better way to achieve this in a sustainable manner, to support NetZero 2030 than an integrated Metropolitan Edge data centre within every community. Keysource and Deep Green are working together to scale this approach across the UK.

Challenges Addressed

Energy costs are at an all-time high and swimming pools are struggling to stay open. (Last summer, BBC News revealed 65 swimming pools had closed since 2019, with rising energy costs cited as a significant reason.) This also bucks the trend of data centre projects by repurposing the heat generated to serve the local community.

The project was able to find the ‘load’ that marries up with the Direct Liquid Cooling compute approach in a footprint that can be sustainable and secure whilst ensuring the IT hardware has valid ‘warranty’ in DLC / Immersed environment.

Moving forward this approach also addresses the Grid limitations and energy requirements that are significantly limiting opportunities to develop new data-centre capacity and creating significant negative publicity for the data centre industry which is manifesting itself in moratoriums on new project development.  In essence, rapidly growing industry energy requirements and carbon footprint represent an existential threat to existing DC business models.

Innovation

This approach utilises small pockets of ‘spare’ and already allocated grid capacity to deliver edge and HPC capabilities within the fabric of society. The energy recapture model saves pools at least 63% on their energy requirements to heat the pool.  In exchange, the pools provide space, power and connectivity to support the deployment.

It utilises the energy efficiency benefits of immersion and direct liquid cooling in combination with heat re-use to deliver a PUE of 1.005 or lower and runs on 100% renewable energy.

Project Challenges

As with many projects in the sector we faced supply chain delays and had to also manage the programme with the swimming pool. The availability of skilled people was an issue as we were looking for specialist partners to work with, with strong supply chain and coverage to support the installation.

Warranty restrictions of existing components is not favourable to immersion projects so we had to work with OEM manufacturers to validate the use of their technology within immersed environments.

Benefits

A cut in gas consumption for pool heating by 91%; a current PUE of 1.005 with a projected PUE of 1.003; projected cost savings of £2500 per month: and projected reduction of carbon footprint of 3 tonnes per month.

Are you looking for a data centre partner that can help you achieve your sustainability goals?

Keysource is a leading provider of data centre design, construction, and management services. We have a proven track record of delivering sustainable data centres that meet the needs of our clients.

Our team of experts can help you every step of the way, from planning and design to construction and commissioning. We will work with you to understand your specific needs and goals, and we will develop a custom solution that meets your budget and timeline.

We are committed to sustainability, and we are always looking for new ways to reduce our environmental impact. We use the latest technologies and techniques to design and build data centres that are as efficient as possible, improving their energy efficiency, reducing their water consumption, and minimizing waste.

Contact us
18 May 2023

Teledata appoints Keysource to deliver new data centre

By Blog, News, Press Release

Teledata, a premium colocation, cloud hosting and data centre services provider based in Manchester, has appointed Keysource as the lead contractor for the design and preconstruction of its new 30,000 sq ft data centre facility (MCR2) which has been funded by UBS. In addition, the critical environment and data centre specialist will also be responsible for delivering ambitious sustainability goals following the calculation of the ‘whole life carbon’ of the facility and a stage 2 carbon assessment which has informed the design.

The project, which leverages existing planning permission, involves a combined design and planning application to ensure local regeneration goals are integrated, including design development past ‘RIBA 2’. Keysource is also harnessing the power of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to lead the design process to provide high performing, resilient and efficient solutions. This will include ensuring that the available site power capacity and available space to increase rack count capacity is maximised, delivering an annualised PUE of less than 1.15 for this.

“To support the major regeneration of the area this an opportunity to deliver a data centre which can differentiate itself within a competitive market through site architecture and design which delivers a high quality and commercially competitive services, whilst delivering local, company and funder ESG goals. This forms the basis of our approach.”

Jon Healy, Operations Director at Keysource

“At Teledata we are committed to delivering the highest levels of service and support and the quality of our data centre estate is absolutely key. This new facility will be best in class in terms of resilience, security and sustainability and we know that we can rely on Keysource to deliver this.”

Matt Edgley, Director – Teledata – A Datum Group Company

Teledata was acquired by Farnborough-based data centre provider Datum Datacentres in September 2022. This marked the first regional bolt-on acquisition for Datum as part of its regional expansion strategy. Datum was acquired by Funds managed by the UBS Asset Management Real Estate & Private Markets business (REPM) in September 2021 with the intention to expand into key regional markets.

Read our Press Release

 

Are you looking for a data centre partner that can help you achieve your sustainability goals?

Keysource is a leading provider of data centre design, construction, and management services. We have a proven track record of delivering sustainable data centres that meet the needs of our clients.

Our team of experts can help you every step of the way, from planning and design to construction and commissioning. We will work with you to understand your specific needs and goals, and we will develop a custom solution that meets your budget and timeline.

We are committed to sustainability, and we are always looking for new ways to reduce our environmental impact. We use the latest technologies and techniques to design and build data centres that are as efficient as possible, improving their energy efficiency, reducing their water consumption, and minimizing waste.

Contact us
15 May 2023

Keysource wins Garmin UK contract

By Blog, News, Press ReleaseNo Comments

Global data centre and critical environment specialist, Keysource, has secured another significant contract with Garmin UK.

The global provider of automotive, fitness, outdoor, marine and aviation technologies is the latest market leader to partner with Keysource for critical services and maintenance at their UK headquarters.

Read More
22 July 2022

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