Digital Realty Trust has updated the POD architecture that the company uses to design and build its turn-key Flex modular data center solution.
Wholesale data center operator Digital Realty Trust announced on Thursday it has updated the POD architecture that the company uses to design and build its turn-key Flex modular data center solution.
The move comes a couple of weeks after Digital Realty Trust named John Sarkis vice president of connectivity & carrier operations as part of its larger initiative to improve the company’s networking offering.
In a post on Data Center Knowledge (Digital Realty Powers Up its POD Architecture), Rich Miller points out that this updated version enables Digital Realty to offer customers up to 1.2 MW of IT capacity in each data hall, up from 1.125 megawatts, which translates to a significant increase in capacity for companies with growing infrastructure.
POD 3.0 advances the modular approach to data center design and reduces the number of components needed for the additional capacity.
This newly updated design is part of Digital Realty’s focus on providing customers with flexible data center solutions that are customized to their individual needs and requirements.
“This new generation of POD Architecture will enable us to do more in terms of capacity and energy performance, using the same operating scale that we successfully deployed as POD 2.0,” said Jim Smith, chief technology officer at Digital Realty. “The size and scope of our global platform provides us with access to a high volume of operating data that we believe is unmatched in the data center industry. Using real-time information, we have been able to fine-tune our design and develop the next generation of our POD Architecture. We were able to demand more from the existing platform and deliver an enhanced solution to our customers in terms of performance, reliability and cost efficiency.”
The most important aspect of Digital Realty’s POD Architecture is the pre-fabrication and inventorying of major electrical and mechanical systems that are usually a barrier to data center builds.
The pre-fabricated components are made in a factory and then stored in warehouses for on-time delivery to project sites, improving quality and speeding up the time to market.
The cooling and electrical systems are pre-commissioned in the factory and then re-commissioned along with the final constructed data center.
POD Architecture 3.0 has simplified the arrangement of components that serves as the foundation of Digital Realty’s Turn-Key Flex solution.
By reducing the infrastructure footprint, Digital Realty will help improve the yield on building space for data centers, as well as construct data centers that have a higher energy efficiency.
Talk back: What do you think of the new 3.0 POD architecture? Do you think it will help Digital Realty Trust cut down on its operating costs for data center builds? Let us know in the comments section.
About Justin Lee
Justin Lee has been a staff analyst with theWHIR since 2004. He writes about a range of web hosting and IT-related issues facing the industry on the WHIR website, as well the print version of the WHIR magazine. Follow him on Twitter @Justin_theWHIR.
