MWC: Huawei demos low-carbon, prefab data centre

Huawei may be known for its phones, but it is also one of the world’s leading digital infrastructure providers. At Mobile World Congress 2022 in Barcelona this week, it is showcasing its commitment to the urgent global mission of carbon neutrality with a solution that meets the demand for low-carbon and green data centres.

It is demonstrating an energy-efficient, prefabricated modular data centre solution for the duration of MWC, running from February 28 to March 3.

Huawei says that, to address challenges facing traditional data centres, it adheres to the “modular + intelligent” design concept.  The concept reshapes the architecture, cooling, operations and maintenance, and power supply, to build simplified, green, intelligent, and secure next-generation data centres. The solution, says the company, helps carriers achieve carbon neutrality goals and optimise data centre performance.

Expanded digital services force data centres to scale up infrastructure and complicates the architecture, construction, deployment, and management of the facilities.

The prefabricated modular data centre provides an ideal solution. A Lego-like construction mode enables flexible configuration and assembly of different modules. Data centres can be quickly built and expanded, shortening the construction period and lowering costs. This solution is quickly applied to large data centres that require frequent scaling – especially carriers’ data centres.

Huawei supplied the following information on four steps it has developed to help plan, construct and manage next-generation intelligent, green data centres:

1. Reshape architecture: Nowadays, prefabricated modular data centres have become the industry standard. A modular and prefabricated approach enables simplified delivery, cutting the construction cycle from more than 18 months to less than six months. This meets the demand for the fast service launch. Huawei’s prefabricated modular data centre has a 97% assembly rate, and does not produce waste liquid, gas, and solid wastes during construction. The construction water consumption and wastes are reduced by 80%, the recovery rate is over 80%, and the construction carbon emissions are reduced by 90%, achieving green construction throughout the lifecycle.
2. Reshape cooling: Most of the electricity in a data centre is consumed by the cooling system, so it is the focus for energy saving and emission reduction. Huawei’s digital iCooling technology and the indirect evaporative cooling solution that maximses the use of free cooling sources reduce the power usage effectiveness (PUE) value of data centres by between 8% and 15%.
3. Reshape O&M: Huawei’s prefabricated modular data centre solution features digital intelligent O&M, which enables autonomous O&M of data centres, cutting O&M costs by around 35%. In addition, refined and intelligent asset capacity management improves resource utilisation by about 20%.
4. Reshape power supply: To meet the demands for increasing services, the next-generation data centres must adopt standardised and modularised designs to ensure high reliability and stability. Therefore, N+1, N+X, or even 2N design solutions are adopted for power supply and cooling for core devices to achieve higher security levels. Based on the concepts of “more silicon less copper” and “more lithium batteries, fewer lead-acid batteries”, as well as AI-based predictive maintenance, Huawei prefabricated modular data centre solution uses high-density and efficient UPSs and manage all links of the power supply and distribution system in a visualised manner, transforming from passive maintenance to proactive maintenance. These measures ensure the continuous and stable operation of data centres.