Humans need not apply at lights-out data center facilities.
For years, industry onlookers have questioned if lights-out data centers—fully automated facilities that require little to no human intervention—would become the standard for data center sites, eliminating the reliance on human staffers.
Fully automated facilities would provide data operators significant savings benefits. Ed LaFrance, VP of business development at Datacate, a Sacramento, California-based data center owner and operator that also provides IT solution services, told IT Brew that the concept of lights-out facilities can be appealing for operators because labor often is one of their largest costs.
“You’re looking at staffing of various types,” LaFrance said. “Support tech staffing, engineering staffing, electrical expertise staffing, security staffing. And so the idea of a lights-out data center is you eliminate virtually all of those staffing cost requirements.”
Doug Adams, CEO and president of NTT Global Data Centers, told IT Brew that unmanned facilities were once the norm in the industry. However, he said premises gradually shifted to a more managed standard over the years.
“The reason for that is the ecosystem has become very large and very complex and frankly leaving a data center [24/7] unattended could be very dangerous,” Adams said.
Light-years away? Ryan Mallory, COO of Flexential, a data center colocation service provider with over 40 data centers nationwide, told IT Brew that while some onlookers in the industry may look at the rise of autonomous vehicles and wonder if the same is on the cards for data center facilities, there is still some way to go.
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“A car is $100,000,” Mallory said. “Data centers are hundreds of millions to billions [with] lots more moving parts over a wider area, so you have some latency implications on both sides.”
Mallory added that while the ability to do tasks remotely is available through systems-based automation, he believes human interaction is still required from a “near-term perspective.”
Adams shared similar sentiments. He told IT Brew that he doesn’t foresee facilities replacing their human staff for some time.
“We’re not there yet,” Adams said. “I’m not sure frankly we’ll ever be there, given the dynamic nature of data centers and the interchangeability of the equipment, etcetera.”
Man of the people. Regardless of the cost-savings fully automated facilities across the industry could provide operators, LaFrance and Adams told IT Brew that human staff still serve as one of the most important assets for a number of facilities.
“You can walk into a lot of data centers—and we do—and you’ll see people there every day doing work day and night,” LaFrance said. “So, we still have not separated ourselves from the human element by a long shot.”