Extreme Heat Challenges Data Centres in India

Contents

This year has seen extreme heat waves in many regions, including India, where temperature touched the agonizing mark of 50 degree Celsius in some places. It could mean many hot ripples. Especially for enterprises, who depend on data centres and servers for digital uptime, core IT, and consistency of services.

"Servers generate substantial heat, and they require adequate cooling for the systems to work in high temperatures", shares Irshad Saifi, CDIO at Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas. "If not managed properly, this can lead to overheating and equipment failure." As a result, cooling expenses surge during heat-waves and impact the bottom line. For example, during the 2019 heatwave in India, power consumption for cooling in data centres increased by 20 percent, leading to significantly higher operational costs.

"Areas in India with consistently high temperatures, such as Rajasthan, Gujarat, and the Delhi National Capital Region, face greater challenges in maintaining optimal data centre conditions", explains Saifi. "For instance, Delhi NCR has recorded temperatures above 50 degrees Celsius in the summer of 2024, which heavily strained cooling systems."

Not All of India is That Hot

Bhoopendra Solanki, Chief Information Officer, Sakra World Hospital, explains: "There are different zones in India itself like Delhi NCR known for its extreme weather, and Bangalore known for its pleasant weather. The heat definitely causes trouble in terms of more power consumption to maintain temperature, performance, reliability, and sustainability. But the impact is not that big in all places." "The Majority of India's IT and data centre industry is concentrated in cities like Bengaluru, Pune, and Chennai," explains Shreya Vanja, Senior Consultant, Growth Advisory, Aranca. "Cities like Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Indore, and Nagpur are also witnessing growing data centre investments due to their lower infrastructure cost. An extreme heat wave does pose a challenge to IT infrastructure, especially in the northern and central regions, with strain on local power infrastructure."

The impact, although limited to regions, comes in many forms – from downtime to cooling expenses to maintenance. So far, no heat-related fires or shut-downs in Indian data centres have been reported. "Higher global temperatures are already being factored into data centre designs. Another consequence of higher temperatures is, that it limits the hours when data centres get 'free cooling' – the periods when it's cool enough not to need to run cooling systems. As these decline, that obviously pushes up energy usage and therefore costs", dissects Luis Rodrigues, COO of Start Campus, which is developing the SINES DC project, a 495 MW data centre campus in Portugal.

In-House Data Centres at Particular Risk

Saifi distills that overheated systems installed in a data centre can cause unexpected downtime, disrupting business operations and causing financial losses: "One may assume that heat affects on-premise IT workloads more than cloud ones. And to some extent, that's true." Saifi avers that on-premise data centres are, particularly, at risk, as they often lack the advanced cooling technologies used in large-scale cloud data centres. "If your data centre is on premises, it should be in the centre of the building, and direct sunlight should not fall on any wall", chimes in Solanki.

Ask Alan Farrimond, Vice President, Data Center Solutions, Wesco Anixter, and he spells out the 50-degree mark in IT parlance. "Extreme ambient temperatures affect the data centre operations, especially the externally placed utility systems that run the data centre 24/7. Moreover, above 50 degrees, the generally designed HVAC systems, if older, will be prone to failure." "These systems are designed to handle a certain heat threshold, but things can get complex when humidity changes and evaporation is affected", adds Jay Dietrich, Research Director of Sustainability, at the Uptime Institute.

What's the Fix?

Some workloads could be moved to less hot times, for example, reporting jobs or e-mail-campaigns. Large in-house facilities could even have separate servers for less-critical jobs and power them down when it gets too hot. That is not an option for commercial data centres who have committed to service levels with high uptime requirements. However, they could incentivize load shifting by offering discounts during less hot hours, similarly to fluctuating prices offered by some electricity providers, or common with telecommunications companies in years past. However, so far, data centres have not been eager to introduce more complex tariffs.

"Invest in energy-efficient cooling technologies, such as liquid cooling or advanced air conditioning systems. Opt for data centres in cooler climates or areas with reliable power. And regularly maintain equipment to prevent overheating." That is Saifi's formula, which also includes a disaster recovery and cloud strategy. Dietrich suggests, "One can shut down non-critical systems. And buy more cooling capacity. There are some good software tools to manage workloads, but we do not see many enterprises using them. You can anticipate problems instead of just reacting to them."

Rodrigues opines that retrofitting existing designs to accommodate new technologies is expensive, difficult, and time-consuming, so right from the start data centres must have flexibility in mind. Vanja illustrates how Nxtra Data, Bharti Airtel's data centre division, utilizes renewable energy, energy-efficient upgrades, and advanced cooling methods like aisle containment and thermal chamber testing to reduce costs and sustain operations amidst rising temperatures. "Their centres are designed with various disaster recovery plans to withstand high temperatures, with their HVAC systems tailored for ambient conditions of 48 to 50 degrees."

In short, there is no such thing as bad weather – only bad clothing. That applies to IT, too.

()