Building data centers in France: how does it work?

The exponential growth in demand for IT, data, and storage, fueled by new applications such as AI, digital health services, and the IoT, is generating increasing demand for data centers whose complexity requires ever-higher levels of security, which in turn requires very costly investments.

Global demand for data centers is on the rise, particularly due to the popularity of cloud computing and the boom in artificial intelligence services, resulting in a substantial increase in data consumption. Without data centers, there would be no internet, no mass storage, no mobile applications, and no IoT. Data centers are at the heart of our digital society, whether for environments dedicated to small and medium-sized businesses or large corporations, in the cloud or on premises.
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Key stages of construction

A data center is a building dedicated to hosting IT systems and associated equipment. These often imposing facilities also house a whole range of telecommunications, power, and cooling infrastructure to ensure the smooth running of the data center.

Needs analysis, planning, and cost factors

For a data center project to be successful, a thorough analysis of business, technical, functional, and strategic needs is essential. The operator or designer must conduct a strategic study with objectives based on the services planned for the future data center (colocation, cloud hosting, etc.); a technical study of the IT infrastructure capacities planned for the data center, electrical capacities (KW), energy redundancy levels, power, and the type of cooling to be implemented, but more importantly, the security, logistics, and human factor of the data center.

Architectural and technical design

Several factors must be taken into account in the architectural and technical design of a data center. These include the level of redundancy of the electrical and cooling systems and the site's capacity for expansion. At UltraEdge, we conduct in-depth studies with a capacity needs assessment and a very accurate cost estimate when developing a data center project.

Depending on the security level of the area and the location of the new site, we consider energy requirements related to cooling and accessibility in order to facilitate a good return on investment.

Construction and project management

With the advent of AI, building a data center has become a complex task requiring in-depth expertise in various fields such as engineering, project management, and information technology, with a strategic view to the future. UltraEdge is well equipped in this area, with strategic and operational expertise in all stages of the data center construction process. Our data centers meet the highest standards of quality, security, and performance.
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Technology & Tech: Key Takeaways

Due to the promise of IoT and AI, the need to increase data center capacity has never been more pressing. More and more techniques are being implemented with the explosion of modern edge data centers that incorporate the latest technologies and bring us closer to end customers. It is important to remember that exponential growth in demand goes hand in hand with the need to modernize the infrastructure and technologies used in data centers.

Electrical infrastructures

Sizing electrical capacity requirements is crucial in any data center construction project. It is important to plan electrical capacity and scalability in accordance with the data center's level of redundancy.

Cooling systems

Data centers are known to be very energy-intensive, although new methods of data center construction are increasingly being implemented. Due to the significant amounts of heat generated by data center equipment, appropriate heat dissipation and cooling technologies and HVAC systems are essential for cooling networked equipment, with air cooling being the most commonly used method. Liquid cooling, which uses water or other fluids to directly cool components, is gaining popularity for certain applications.

Security and résilience

Data centers contain highly critical infrastructure, from corporate data to the personal data of millions of customers and public administrations. This means that physical and other threats can arise. It is critical and crucial to implement physical security measures adapted to the data center environment, with video surveillance systems, badges, and airlocks, and a high level of segmentation of the environment into security zones.
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What are the environmental challenges?

Globally, data centers are responsible for almost 2% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In France, data centers account for 14% of emissions. Due to their energy consumption, data centers are considered polluting at a time when we swear by digital progress and the mad rush towards AI. PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) is the indicator that measures the energy efficiency of a data center. With the many technological innovations related to IoT and AI, data center construction standards are helping to reduce the ecological footprint of new data centers.

Reducing carbon footprint

The European Code of Conduct for Data Centers shares best practices for greening these infrastructures and moving toward energy efficiency. With a view to reducing the ecological footprint of data centers, data center owners such as UltraEdge have adopted construction methods that take these environmental standards into account, with the aim of implementing renewable energy solutions such as wind power, hydroelectric power, solar energy, etc., to better power and cool data centers.

Resource management and specificities

Managing a data center requires good resource planning that takes into account their specific characteristics. It is necessary to clearly define and identify all the assets in the data center ecosystem. With the introduction of IoT and AI in data centers, the management of resources such as energy, cooling, fuel, asset maintenance, etc., is becoming increasingly automated. This allows for better resource management while combining their specific characteristics. Data centers today use tools (DCIM) specially developed to facilitate automation and resource management.
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UltraEdge data centers: certifications and compliance

With a network of 250 data centers in France, UltraEdge has a large network of shared and interconnected data centers in all regions of France with immediate availability. UltraEdge has the necessary certifications for data center operators, such as: ISO27001 (Information Security Management), ISO9001 (Quality Management), ISO50001 (Energy Management), HDS (Health Data Hosting), and CSR (Environmental Commitment).