Future Facilities Sherman Ikemoto recently wrote an article for Data Center Knowledge entitled “A Forgotten Data Center Cost: Lost Capacity”. In the article, Sherman explains that “most data centers never achieve the capacity for which they were designed”.
Often 30 percent or more of data center capacity is lost in operation. On a global scale, out of 15.5 GW of available data center capacity, a minimum of 4.65 GW is unusable. At industry averages, this amounts to about 31 million square feet of wasted data center floor space and $70B of unrealized capital expense in the data center. The losses are staggering.
Given the stakes, why isn’t much being said about lost capacity? Because these losses are due to fragmentation of infrastructure resources – space, power, cooling and networking – that build slowly and imperceptively early in the data center life span. As resources fragment, the data center becomes less and less able to support the full, intended IT load. Only well into the operational life of the facility, when the margin on capacity has closed, is the problem discovered. Lack of visibility and the delay between cause and detection conceal the elephant in the room: Lost Capacity.
