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AI Workload Deployment in Data Centers: Retrofit, Outsource or Build New?
Presented by
Schneider Electric
Presented by
Schneider Electric
Many data centers, designed for conventional CPU-based workloads, are ill-equipped to handle the unprecedented demands of Generative AI. Training and agentic AI inference workloads come with extreme rack power densities.
This requires a shift away from traditional power and cooling architectures.
These power-hungry AI workloads demand a new class of infrastructure. It is defined by high-density racks, direct liquid cooling, and upgraded high-voltage AC (or even DC) power delivery to efficiently and reliably support the immense power and cooling needs, as well as the weight of the specialized hardware they run on.
Not all AI workloads are energy intensive, however. Smaller AI inference models, for example, may behave like traditional IT having power, cooling, and space requirements that fit well within an existing site’s capabilities.
For owners of existing data center portfolios, deploying high density AI workloads presents both a significant challenge and a strategic opportunity. For colocation companies, supporting tenant AI workloads is a necessity. For enterprise companies, deploying AI across their business processes, offers, and services is equally important for being innovative and remaining competitive. Taking advantage of existing assets to potentially accelerate AI deployments at a lower cost is the opportunity.
While much attention has been put on the construction of new facilities and “AI factories”, executives are looking at existing facilities with excess capacity. Can they improve their return on capital by retrofitting existing data centers to support heavy, energy-dense AI infrastructure? Is it faster and/or more cost effective than building new or outsourcing? This report helps answer these questions.
Note, this report is not about the specific changes needed in your physical infrastructure systems to support high-density AI workloads. We have targeted white papers and reports addressing those topics.
This report describes a decision framework for determining if retrofitting makes sense and offers advice for executing a retrofit/ modernization project more effectively.
This content is made possible by our sponsor Schneider Electric; it is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Route Fifty’s editorial staff.
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