Typical Data Centre Power Requirements

Most written articles reference the high power consumption requirements for data centres given the high density of hardware and its cooling requirements. Clearly though, over the past few years the industry has moved towards higher processor performance per watt.

I recently read an article from 2008 which set a typical data centre power requirement at around 5 MW per 50,000 square foot. Here we are five years later, presumably this will no longer the case given processor advances and improved cooling strategies? Does anybody have a more up to date estimate of typical power requirements with respect to area or possibly a recent case study?

Any comment would help enormously on a project I am currently working on.

I can tell you I manage 2 data centres totalling 14,000 sq foot. first is 8k sqf and has 950kw, (completely utilised) and the second is 6k sq foot and has around 900kw (80% utilised).

I guess your figured are there or thereabouts.

This doesn't include cooling which is powered separately and managed by the host.

So i'g guess your figures are reasoably there or thereabouts. Worth noting that in our larger smaller DC, we have loads of power and no usable space, and in our bigger DC we have loads of usable space and no power.

its worth bearing in mind that although some devices are becoming more power efficient, the majority of kit is only ever utilised at 10% tops. so if all the kit was running full throttle, temperature might become an issue.

Alos, bear in mind that old, inefficent kit is still a bugger to remove when the unix guys love its reliability (i/m looking at you, RS/6000)

Thanks for the feedback, the subsequent digging I have done hasn't contradicted these figures so far. As the potential project I am looking at is new build I am fairly confident the legacy kit shouldn't be an issue.