priority for low-cost data centres ,” warns Tony Grayson , General Manager , Quantum , Compass Datacenters .
“ This mistake lays the groundwork for a sustainability nightmare that could require decades and countless capital to mitigate .”
Creating a separate efficiency strategy for edge data centres Due to the singular nature of their scale and location , sites at the edge usually require their own separate , specific efficiency strategy .
“ There could be tens to hundreds of thousands of edge facilities across the globe based on the increasing need to bring compute , storage , AI , ML , etc ., closer to the endpoint or customer . Some of these facilities will most likely be in residential neighbourhoods – down the street from local schools , playgrounds , and the local market . The sheer number of these facilities and their sensitive location raises the stakes considerably ,” Grayson explains .
Although this location advantage is intrinsic to their USPs , it brings with it a series of serious , specific sustainability challenges for edge data centres .
“ You don ’ t have to search hard for examples of what can go wrong with networking / computing facilities deployed at this scale and in these locations . The globe is covered with rusting , leaking , cracked , carbon-heavy edge telco huts from the last twenty years that were built as cheaply as possible with no focus on sustainability ,” Grayson outlines .
“ Today , many of these disintegrating hulks have environmental liabilities for the companies that own them and the neighbourhoods where they are located . And the cost of retrofitting and remediating those facilities is sky-high . Without the right approach to edge infrastructure sustainability , we are destined to repeat those mistakes on an even larger scale .” datacentremagazine . com 89