The data center industry is expected to reach $517 billion by 2030, fueling AI, the Internet of Things, Big Data, and everyday business transactions. As the industry expands, facilities managers will be among the most needed roles.

These opportunities abound, but so do the complex infrastructure challenges that keep data center facilities running. To stay operational, they extract vast amounts of resources like water from the local area and electricity from the power grid, moving back the needle on carbon emissions goals.

Managing data center facility budgets will also become trickier in 2025, as power prices are set to rocket. Facilities managers will also have to navigate the risks of more costly downtime as more data facilities come online and stress the power grid.

However, FMs can meaningfully reduce their data centers’ environmental footprint by reducing energy consumption, potentially leading to greater profitability. This article highlights the current challenges in managing an existing data center facility—like the growing challenges in U.S. electricity—and how they can be mindfully overcome.

The Proactive FM’s Role in Data Centers

Managing expensive data center facilities requires a more proactive approach to maintenance and inspections than others. Proactive strategies allow FMs to catch problems before they develop and buy time to create strategies that improve resource efficiencies.

Vertiv, a technology infrastructure company, shares a stepwise strategy for managing data center facilities that can help tackle any of the challenges you may face.

Gather information: Collect all the information about your facility you can, especially data crucial to high-risk situations, like humidity spikes that can lead to equipment malfunctions, safety issues, or outages. Robust, routine monitoring should also include visual inspections of the entire HVAC system to identify components that need replacing.

Visualizing and monitoring your facility’s activities, flows, systems, and equipment in real-time builds your understanding of their baselines and enables immediate response to potential issues. It also helps FMs understand their facilities’ environmental impact. This monitoring is made easier with a suite of advanced technologies like smart building systems, data center infrastructure management, network performance management software, and IoT sensors. According to the Uptime Institute, fewer than half of data center owners and operators actually track the metrics they need to assess their sustainability and potential regulatory requirements.

Analyze data: Look over your facility data and leverage AI and machine learning to see where systems are encountering bottlenecks or may be trending towards issues like HVAC. Let these data guide operational decisions like maintaining redundancies in the HVAC system or using predictive models to forecast equipment failures.

Automate processes: Lastly, automation can be a facilities manager’s most significant ally. However, according to the Uptime Institute, trust in AI for data center operations has declined for three consecutive years. AI and automation can help make processes more efficient and catch system hiccups more quickly without relying on the FM and colleagues. Machine learning and automation are well-placed in data centers to help maintain temperatures, airflow, and humidity in response to current conditions and historical data.

When automation isn’t possible, consider how your SOPs can be modified to ensure that you and your team have sound strategies for dealing with challenges as they arise.

Challenges & Solutions

Keeping the foundational three-step process in mind for more proactive FM in data centers can mitigate challenges to power reliability, costs, and water usage.

Power Reliability & Costs

The amount of power that data centers use is staggering. A 2024 report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy estimates that data center energy use has tripled over the past decade, straining the power grid and power to consumers. Data centers are also the root cause of skyrocketing electricity costs in some parts of the U.S. and are major contributors to carbon emissions.

Some states, like California, want to offset the booming energy use by proposing tax incentives to encourage data centers to use cleaner energy. FMs have the power to create better conditions for reliable, cost-effective energy and get ahead of carbon regulations by doing the following:

• Know your PUEs and CUEs: Use your power usage effectiveness ratio, which is the power provided to a data center divided by the power your center uses. Efficient power usage is a ratio of one. Also, aim for a low carbon usage effectiveness number, which measures carbon emissions generated by your data center divided by energy consumption.
• Create more efficient power use: Use your DCIM data to guide how well energy has been utilized in your facility. Some equipment may be underutilized. Having multiple virtual servers instead of a consolidated physical server may better use your limited energy resources. Where can you minimize waste and consolidate workloads?
• Choose your energy source wisely: The energy source you use to power your data center can significantly impact your carbon footprint. If sustainability is important to you, choose utility providers with higher proportions of renewable energy sources like wind and solar. Explore the possibility of working with your provider to funnel the surplus energy your center creates onto the grid and give back to the community’s shared resources.

Water & Cooling Efficiency

Using air cooling to maintain temperatures in a data facility is no longer enough to meet the needs of new servers and computer chips, which get hotter quicker than older models due to their superior computational power. Most data centers run Class A1 and A2 equipment, which require 20-80% relative humidity. Class A1 operates between 59 and 89 degrees Fahrenheit, and Class A2 runs at 50-95.

The data center industry is among the most significant drains on water resources in the United States, consuming at least 400 million gallons of water each day. To gauge what this looks like at your facility, just to cool a data center, between 0.26 to 2.4 gallons of water evaporates for every kilowatt-hour (pWh) of server energy used. The amount depends on weather conditions and operational settings. This is in addition to water used at thermoelectric or hydroelectric plants to provide electricity for facilities and water used in the supply chain: over 2 gallons of water are needed to make a single microchip.

Solutions for more efficient cooling and water use include strategies that:

• Monitor water flow: One of the easiest ways to make your water use more efficient is to look for and resolve any leaks and install low-flow fixtures, says FlowPath, a computerized maintenance management system.
• Keep water cold: Data centers can become more water-efficient by raising the chilled water temperature, evaluating what chillers need replacing, and tracking water consumption, according to the Center of Expertise for Energy Efficiency in Data Centers.
• Upgrade equipment: Jared Lyles, energy engineer at MD Energy Advisors, told Facilities Management Advisor that data centers should “upgrade to more efficient chillers, install variable frequency drives (VFDs) on fans and pumps, and optimize airflow management. HVAC systems are often the largest energy consumers in data centers and large buildings. These improvements reduce kWh usage and peak demand, lowering capacity charges.”
• Reuse water: Chardon Labs, a chemical water treatment servicer, recommends rainwater harvesting systems and capturing water condensation. They also recommend treatment of your data center’s water sources to remove impurities that can corrode and build up on servers, impairing their performance. This also allows facilities to reuse the water multiple times.
• Change your layout: ServerLIFT, a company that provides tools and solutions for rack-mounted IT equipment, recommends changing your data center layout if it doesn’t allow enough space to cool the servers adequately. Depending on the number of server racks and their proximity, your facility will have higher cooling needs. ServerLIFT says that water cooling can help improve heat removal and energy efficiency.
• Replacing older equipment: Newer equipment can operate well with higher temperatures for longer, so you won’t have to spend as much on cooling or risk overheating equipment.
• Consider different air distribution and cooling systems: According to the IEEE Computer Society, data centers can use evaporative cooling to reduce heat through water with evaporation pads and high-pressure spray systems or ultrasonic humidification to produce the right amount of moisture needed to run specific machines. Liquid cooling is a newer technology that supports high-density centers and is more efficient than air conditioning. With this system, the entire device is either immersed in liquid or the liquid goes directly to the processing chip.

A More Efficient & Sustainable Future for Data Centers

Addressing these key energy areas can help FMs run more efficient facilities in the face of strained shared resources while bringing in financial returns in the long term—and, significantly, make a meaningful contribution to society at large.

Ali Hickerson is a freelance journalist, content writer, and strategist based in Brooklyn, N.Y. Outside of Facilities Management Advisor, Ali’s recent bylines on health and workplace issues have crisscrossed the country and helped advocate for programs and policies that work to create a healthier, more humane, and equitable world.

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