Ravindra Bapat, the APAC Sector Lead – Data Centre at Aggreko
will deliver his keynote on “AI: redefining data center
infrastructure” at the CDC Sydney on September 14th. He sees
AI as presenting an immediate and considerable challenge to
data centres: “AI is changing workloads in a way that data centers
have not seen before. This evolution is happening very fast, too
fast so the infrastructure is not nearly ready to handle these types
of workloads”.
Given Aggreko’s focus on renting power and cooling products for
data centre projects across their lifecycle, Ravindra sees the
growth in demand driven by AI as creating the need for data
centre build and expansion: “If you were looking at 6 kW/rack you
are now looking at 20, 30 or 40 kW/rack”.
This leaves many data centre owners and operators unprepared:
“Right now the challenge in front of them is from the infrastructure
point of view. How can their infrastructure tackle this growing
demand, which probably needs 10 times more capacity than what
they currently have and which their rack densities are not
designed for?”
The challenge creates project uncertainty in which temporary
solutions for power and cooling provision can help provide greater
and more accurate project delivery: “Because AI is a new thing –
there could be a dilemma in terms of whether they should really
put in such a high capex or should they test their solution with
something temporary, where they only have to pay only for the
time they use”.
In the longer term, Ravindra sees modular design and build taking
a larger role in meeting demand because of its flexibility: “You
have that flexibility to change your modular design based on your
business requirements. And that's exactly like how Aggreko also
offers power and cooling”.
Ravindra is keen through his keynote to communicate how AI is
growing, the implications of this for the way data centres are
designed, built and operated, and the role of the temporary
provision of power and cooling in reducing the uncertainty of
projects while avoiding the unnecessary costs of sizing the
requirement incorrectly.
For further information and to register please visit https://w.media/events/sydney-cloud-datacenter-convention-2023/
