When parts are built, not on an exposed site, but in a controlled environment, then you have a higher quality solution in the form of prefabricated modular architecture.

The Need for Reliable Edge Data Centres

As over 95% of the needed parts are integrated, this architecture offers quick and precise installation that gives a time saving of up to 40%, as compared to the conventional built-up wall systems. Because all elements are pre-designed and their manufacture takes place in controlled environments, it helps to largely enable a long-term building solution.

Companies are continuing to put more of their resources into the cloud, and this places greater emphasis on a need for edge data centres, which in turn serve two main purposes. These are the provision of localised processing for applications that are on-premises, as well as connectivity to other cloud-based resources and applications.

Edge data centres have thus become very critical, and when they go into downtime it is something companies cannot afford, as this would mean that they would lose not just local processing, but also access to any cloud resources and larger networks outside the walls of the edge data centre.

How then can you build an edge data centre which has the reliability needed by companies, and still not have to spend the time, expense, and effort that the building of a traditional data centre requires? In several cases, this answer lies in the use of data centre components that are prefabricated and modular.

The term “prefabricated modular data centre” brings to  mind the use of large ISO containers, which is one of the options available. Modular data centres can, however, come in many different shapes and sizes. You can have one rack in an enclosure that is self-contained, which can then fit into a closet or a room that has made from prefabricated wall panels and is modular, enabling the data centre to use any space within a larger room.

Features of Data Centre Modules

Irrespective of their size, prefabricated data centre modules will have a few things in common:

• They will have all the security and resiliency that is provided by traditional data centres.
• They have a flexibility that enables them to be built so that they fit into any environment.
• Their scalability gives them the capability for expansion to meet any growing demand.
• They can be repeated, allowing users to have the capability to implement identical installations in many locations, allow for the ultimate predictability in the required efficiency, operations, and reliability. This also makes it easier to deploy training and implementation standards.

We have been able to see a variety of ways to implement prefabricated modular data centres located at the edge.
For example, hospitals have been able to connect to applications that are based on the cloud so that they are able to collect data from infusion pumps and other dispensing devices, ensuring that no patient gets a drug that will react adversely with another.

Most hospitals have significant requirements for local processing, and this includes any systems that are needed to collect, store, and share the records of patients locally so that privacy regulations are complied with. MRI scans produce large files and will benefit from local processing.

In such environments, an on-site edge data centre becomes no less important than the cloud-based resources to which it is connected. An edge data centre that is resilient and functional will deliver the needed local processing performance, and not have any latency issues that could be presented by cloud-based data centres. Prefabricated modules can provide all this, and yet be designed so that they fit into any available space inside the hospital or outside it.

For applications such as these, it is a better option to have a prefabricated and modular data centre than to have to build a traditional data centre from the ground up. These modules will be prebuilt in factory environments that are controlled and this gives it a superiority to any variances in construction that can come up in site “stick-built” data centres. Delivery is also faster and will be in 12 to 16 weeks, which is just 20% to 30% of the time that the building of new data centres would otherwise take. Some key parts are available from the UPS battery shop.