Big Data Center： the ＂Granary＂ in the Internet Age

The Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee meeting of the Communist Party of China pointed out that "speeding up the construction of new infrastructure such as 5G networks and data centers" has aroused great concern from all walks of life. Traditional infrastructure refers to railways, highways, bridges, water conservancy projects and other large buildings, which is often referred to as "Iron Gong Ji". The "new infrastructure" refers to the infrastructure construction focused on science and technology, covering 5G, artificial intelligence, industrial Internet, etc., with a wider scope, which can better reflect the characteristics of the digital economy and better promote the economic transformation and upgrading of China.

What does "new infrastructure" mainly include? Where is the "new"? What is the important role in stabilizing the economy? What changes will it bring to social development and the lives of ordinary people?

The importance of big data centers has become increasingly prominent.

In the era of mobile Internet, data traffic is increasing. Last year, the average monthly traffic of mobile Internet users in China was 7.82GB, 1.69 times that of 2018, and enterprise data also showed explosive growth. However, at present, less than 2% of enterprise data is stored, of which only 10% is used for data analysis. This shows that there is a big gap in China’s data storage and utilization capacity. In this context, the importance of big data center, namely IDC, has become increasingly prominent. Big data center is the center of data storage, processing and interaction, and is considered as one of the new infrastructures at present. Wang Peng, vice president of CCID Research Institute of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said that especially during the COVID-19 epidemic, some new Internet business models emerged, and the importance of big data centers was further enhanced. "These business models are driven and supported by technologies such as the Internet and artificial intelligence. In this process, there will definitely be more data flowing on the Internet, whether it is structured, such as usual data statistics, reports, etc., or unstructured, like video and audio, data is generated in large quantities, more and faster than in the past, so the importance of big data centers is further enhanced." Wang Peng said.

Big data centers have huge room for development.

The data shows that at present, 40% of IDC cabinets in the world are in the United States, and only 8% in China, while the number of Internet users in China is obviously more than that in the United States, which means that there is a lot of room for the development of big data centers. Wu Hequan, an academician of China Academy of Engineering, predicts that the cumulative IDC market in China will exceed 1 trillion yuan from 2020 to 2025. He said: "The construction of a big data center is a long industrial chain, including servers, routers, switches, optical modules, as well as power supply, software, networks and computer rooms. In addition, for the IDC industry chain, what is more important is IDC integrated operation and maintenance, as well as’ cloud service providers’ and solutions. "

From a global perspective, technology giants such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook are all vigorously building big data centers and investing heavily. A data center planned to be built in South Korea will also set a record for the largest local private investment. The number of servers in some super-large data centers is usually more than hundreds of thousands, but the server room is not the most "burning money" place. "In fact, the computer room only accounts for more than 10% of the investment in the big data center, and the greater investment is in the power supply system. It must ensure very reliable power supply and ensure that the efficiency of the power supply is quite high. Another big investment is in the refrigeration system, which requires sophisticated air conditioning. In addition to power supply and refrigeration, there are also investments in lightning protection, security, disaster recovery, environmental monitoring, and integrated wiring. " He Hezhen said.

Where is the "new" big data center?

In recent years, with the development of cloud computing, big data centers have been upgraded to "cloud data centers", which are characterized by highly virtualized servers, storage, networks and applications, and users can call various resources as needed. The data center has gradually become a universal "granary" for big data, cloud computing, industrial Internet and artificial intelligence. "The new generation of information infrastructure is not only a new infrastructure, but also a strategic emerging industry. It is also a new market for information consumption. It is also a general supporting technology for new infrastructure in other fields and a new engine for digitalization of traditional industries." He Hezhen said.

At present, China’s data center construction has blossomed everywhere, and many cities have formulated data center construction plans and introduced a number of preferential policies. According to the statistics of China ICT Institute, the number of IDC racks in China is expected to increase to 3.26 million in 2020.
(Original title: [Decoding new infrastructure] Big data center: "granary" in the Internet age)