Data Center Storage in Rail: AI, Efficiency, & Future (Yuan)

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Introduction

According to forecasts, the global enterprise data center and hosting market was worth US$112.4 billion in 2024 and is forecast to grow to $188.2 billion by 2029, a CAGR of 10.9%. Industry leader Yuan Yuan shared perspectives on how data storage is poised to play a critical role in powering the next generation of digital innovation.

Data Center Market and Performance Bottlenecks

Data centers are evolving beyond simple data storage, encompassing managed storage, backup, infrastructure outsourcing, and AI training. Despite market growth, data centers face challenges such as limited space, power constraints, and performance bottlenecks, particularly when handling demanding AI workloads. Yuan noted that CPU card utilization rates are around 50%, indicating a storage issue, and the performance of traditional hard disk drives (HDDs) can no longer meet the demands of AI, big data, and high-concurrency applications for low latency and high IOPS.

All-Flash Data Storage Advantages

All-flash data storage solutions offer a faster, more efficient, and compact alternative to traditional HDDs. They address bottlenecks and improve business efficiency, overcoming issues related to cabinet space and high power consumption. The transition from JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks) to diskless enclosures has also been launched, enabling flexible expansion and efficient storage resource management. Flash storage offers significant advantages over HDDs, including higher speeds. SSDs can achieve throughputs up to 15 gigabytes per second, compared to 100 megabytes per second for HDDs. Furthermore, flash storage is more efficient, with power consumption, space, and weight being approximately ten times less than traditional HDDs.

Cost, Reliability, and AI Data Lake Solution

The primary concern with all-flash data storage remains its higher cost, being approximately three times more expensive than HDDs. However, to accommodate the increasing demand for data driven by AI, new strategies such as power saving and data compression are being implemented. While flash storage was once considered less robust, advancements in SSD controllers and memory have improved reliability, with SSDs now having a similar lifespan to HDDs, which are rated to last about two million hours. The AI Data Lake Solution is designed to accelerate AI adoption by delivering a high-quality AI corpus and speeding up model training and inference. It enables centralized and unified data management and breaks down data silos to empower data-driven business innovation.

Energy Efficiency and Future Outlook

Data centers are energy-intensive, accounting for approximately 1.5% of the world’s electricity consumption in 2024 (415 TWh), with a projected increase to nearly 3% (945 TWh) by 2030. All-flash scale-out storage has achieved ENERGY STAR certification for energy efficiency, with some solutions using as little as 0.25 watts per terabyte, which is the lowest in the industry. Yuan projects that the demand for data will continue to grow, driven by AI. The company’s approach allows customers to double their storage capacity every two years without requiring additional power or space.

Conclusion

The global enterprise data center and hosting market is experiencing substantial growth. All-flash data storage solutions are providing more efficient, and compact alternatives to traditional HDDs. As AI and data demands increase, companies are focusing on new innovations. Data centers are also working to reduce their energy consumption.

Company Summary

ENERGY STAR®: ENERGY STAR is a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency voluntary program that helps businesses and individuals save money and protect the climate through superior energy efficiency.

Technology

HDD: Hard Disk Drives (HDD) are a traditional data storage devices that use magnetic storage to store and retrieve digital information.

IOPS: Input/Output Operations Per Second. A performance metric used to measure how many read and write operations a storage device can perform in one second.

JBOD: Just a Bunch of Disks, is a method of connecting multiple hard disk drives to a computer.

SSD: Solid State Drive (SSD), a type of storage device that uses flash memory to store data.

UCM: Unified Cache Manager.

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