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Survey reveals strong growth as operators brace for expanding sustainability requirements
Findings from Uptime Institute ’ s recent survey highlight the growing , industry-wide need to achieve meaningful efficiency gains , evolve sustainability reporting practices , prevent costly outages and much more .
Uptime Institute has announced the release of its 12th Annual Global Data Center Survey . The findings show an industry that is growing , dynamic and increasingly resilient , but still working to address increasing pressure for sustainability progress and reporting , continuing staffing shortages , supply chain delays , costly outages and other complex challenges .
“ The global digital infrastructure sector continues to enjoy strong growth and expansion , despite the many obstacles operators are facing today ,” said Andy Lawrence , Executive Director of Research , Uptime Institute Intelligence . “ We ’ ve seen the industry invest in increased resiliency and reliability , but there ’ s still work to be done when it comes to improving efficiency , environmental sustainability , outage prevention , staffing pipelines and more .”
Uptime ’ s annual Global Data Center Survey is the largest and most comprehensive in the digital infrastructure industry . It provides detailed insights into the digital critical infrastructure landscape and a sense of its future trajectory . Key findings from the 2022 report include :
• Many data center operators are unprepared for mounting sustainability requirements and regulations – Most respondents say they report on overall data center power use and PUE , but many still are not tracking critical environmental metrics . Although 63 % of operators believe authorities in their region will require them to publicly report environmental data in the next five years , just 37 % collect and report carbon emissions data ( a slight increase over 33 % in 2021 ) and only 39 % currently report their water use ( a 12 % drop compared to 2021 ). New laws , standards and requirements will force operators to address these gaps and establish more stringent sustainability tracking and reporting practices in the coming years .
• PUE progress is in stasis for now and future efficiency gains must focus on IT power – The average annual power usage effectiveness ( PUE ) reported in 2022 was 1.55 . This represents a slight improvement over the 2021 average of 1.57 , which is consistent with the trend of marginal PUE gains Uptime has observed annually since 2014 . Going forward , achieving substantial data center efficiency improvements will require a new focus on IT efficiency , along with metrics to track and report progress .
• More operators are investing to bolster data center resiliency – Data center owners and operators are making significant investments in the resiliency of their physical infrastructure , with about 40 % of respondents reporting increased redundancy levels at their primary data centers in the past three to five years . Power and cooling systems have received similar attention , with a third of operators upgrading either or both .
Uptime ’ s 2022 Global Data Center Survey also includes findings on industry attitudes towards nuclear energy , server refresh rates , rack density trends and more .
This year ’ s study took place in H1 2022 and includes responses from around 800 data center owners and operators responsible for managing infrastructure at the world ’ s largest IT organizations . It also includes insights from 700 data center suppliers , designers and advisors worldwide . p
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