The data center industry in Indonesia is at an interesting crossroads, driven by rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI). This radical change, from generative AI to the evolving energy grid, presents data center operators with both unique challenges and remarkable opportunities. To navigate this change, companies must prioritize the transformation of their infrastructure. This article will explore how five key imperatives—be transformative, be efficient, be first, be confident, and be future-ready—can guide data center owners and operators in addressing the transformative impact of AI. A crucial component in this transformation is the vital role of a reliable data center cooling distributor like Climanusa.
The Impact of AI on the Data Center
AI encompasses various subfields and technologies, including machine learning, natural language processing, and others, all of which are interconnected and often build upon each other to enable more advanced AI systems. The adoption of AI has surged dramatically in recent years. A McKinsey survey reveals that the percentage of organizations using AI jumped from 55% in 2023 to 72% in 2024, with generative AI accounting for most of that growth. This increased adoption places immense pressure on data center infrastructure.
AI workloads are considerably more power-intensive than traditional data center workloads. This power demand is characterized by pulse loads during periods of high computational activity. Furthermore, AI hardware is physically denser, consuming more power per unit area than traditional CPUs. This concentration of heat generation often requires new approaches to heat removal. Therefore, enterprises must take steps to safeguard the AI systems they are hosting and ensure they have the required infrastructure to manage these dynamic and ultra-dense workloads. This is where the role of specialists like Climanusa, as a data center cooling distributor, becomes essential to ensure systems operate at optimal temperatures.
The Five Imperatives for Data Center AI Transformation
Prioritizing the imperatives of transformation, efficiency, speed, confidence, and future readiness can help data center owners and operators better position themselves to exploit the benefits of new technology and, hopefully, side-step the pitfalls.
1. The Transformative Imperative: Embracing Radical Change
The adoption of AI, particularly generative AI, is expected to drive substantial organizational transformation. According to a global survey of executives, 79% of respondents expect generative AI to drive significant transformation in less than three years. Before that transformation can take place, it may be necessary to upgrade some data center systems. This could mean increasing system capacity across the power train, adopting cooling technologies designed specifically to remove heat from high-density racks and clusters, and making more efficient use of data center white space.
Whether retrofitting or building new, data center infrastructure may be required to support rack power densities exceeding 100 kW. Rack weight is also an issue, with some AI systems requiring more than double the weight of conventional racks. Achieving these goals will require a holistic approach to data center infrastructure that leverages designs developed collaboratively by computing and infrastructure providers. As such, a data center cooling distributor like Climanusa must be capable of offering solutions that are not only efficient but also adaptable to these fundamental shifts.
2. The Efficient Imperative: Optimizing Energy Use and Processes
AI can improve organizational efficiency by automating routine processes, speeding the analysis of large data sets, and streamlining forecasting and training. In fact, a 2024 AI survey found that the most frequently adopted use cases for generative AI tended to favor applications that focused on automating tasks to improve efficiency.
Optimizing energy efficiency can be achieved through design approaches that minimize stranded power, leverage new approaches to cooling, implement management and control strategies that minimize energy consumption, and improve the circular economy within the data center. One of the critical roles of a data center cooling distributor is to provide solutions that maximize energy efficiency. This includes advanced cooling systems that can adapt to dynamic workloads and minimize energy waste.
3. The First Imperative: Accelerating Time to Market
Many enterprises see AI as a strategic technology that can create a competitive advantage by being first to market with AI-powered solutions. This belief puts pressure on data center directors to compress timelines for adopting AI compute. The traditional approach of designing and managing power and cooling systems independently will prove inadequate in meeting business expectations.
Instead, an integrated approach to critical infrastructure that brings together power and cooling design can mitigate risk and accelerate deployment speed. Assessing multi-vendor qualifications, dependencies, and technical specifications can also delay AI design and implementation. Climanusa, as a provider of integrated solutions, can simplify this process and support fast-moving projects by providing ready-to-deploy, integrated cooling solutions.
4. The Confident Imperative: Ensuring Reliability and Scalability
For AI to play the transformative role many expect, enterprises need to be confident in their ability to reliably support and scale their AI solutions. Concerns related to governance, security, and data center limitations were cited as key obstacles to advancing initiatives. Thoughtful planning can help enterprises have the right data center infrastructure in place to support their AI strategy.
Finding the right balance between risk and cost, anticipating the impact of rising rack densities, and preparing for the risk tolerance of future business-critical use cases should all be considered in long-term planning. Remote management systems that enable fast and efficient troubleshooting and well-defined service and maintenance plans will be essential to enable and reinforce the reliability of AI systems. A competent data center cooling distributor, such as Climanusa, provides not only products but also comprehensive services and after-sales support to ensure the reliability of the cooling system, which is a vital component of the entire infrastructure.
5. The Future-Ready Imperative: Planning for Continuous Evolution
The density and performance of AI platforms are growing rapidly. Today’s “high” density racks will become normalized as they are eclipsed in the near future by even higher-density racks. Preparing the data center for a power-dense future requires making infrastructure investments that mitigate the cost of upgrades, can grow in large blocks as well as incrementally, and pave the way for self-healing through industry-standard APIs.
It is also important to put in place systems that can meet current and future responsible business challenges by using power efficiently, enabling support for alternative energy sources, capturing and reusing heat, and minimizing e-waste. With AI driving rack densities into three- and four-digit kWs, the need for advanced and scalable solutions to power and cool those racks, minimize their environmental footprint, and empower these emerging AI “factories” has never been highe1r. Innovative cooling solutions, including direct-to-chip liquid cooling, will be key to achieving these goals. A future-ready data center cooling distributor, like Climanusa, must be prepared to offer these latest technologies to help their customers stay competitive.
Infrastructure Design Principles for Success
To meet the requirements of AI, the design strategies and processes that have been employed for decades also need to be updated. Some AI-specific design principles to consider are:
- Design power and cooling holistically: A holistic approach to infrastructure is required to meet AI’s simultaneous power and cooling demands. By employing highly efficient integrated technologies like direct-to-chip liquid cooling alongside advanced power infrastructure, holistically designed solutions enhance overall efficiency, enable scalability, and ensure that AI workloads are not throttled by infrastructure limitations.
- Make effective use of available power: AI is projected to create unprecedented growth in data center power consumption. AI racks must use every watt of power as efficiently as possible, necessitating designs that eliminate stranded power by aligning AI clusters to data center capacity blocks.
- Balance TCO, redundancy, and blast radius: Maximizing the value of AI infrastructure requires a careful analysis of total costs, redundancy, and the potential scope of damage that could occur in the event of a failure (blast radius). Achieving the proper balance optimizes capital investment, risk management, scalability, and reliability.
- Prepare for AI workload surges: AI workloads can have significant variances in their resource requirements, leading to dynamic computing demand. Infrastructure must be designed to accommodate dynamic workloads through buffer capacity and the use of advanced system-level controls.
- Leverage liquid- and air-cooling technologies: Combining liquid and air cooling technologies allows the strengths of each technology to complement each other. This results in a solution that is flexible to address varying cooling needs across workloads and is both efficient and scalable.
- Design for the future: Anyone designing for AI today must have an eye on the future. Climanusa is planning for a future in which the computing capacity of a 1 MW data center will be packed into a single rack.
In conclusion, the AI transformation is an inevitability that requires a planned, strategic approach to data center infrastructure. By implementing these five key imperatives and following updated design principles, companies in Indonesia can ensure their data centers are ready to support the coming wave of AI innovation. In this endeavor, a partner like Climanusa, as a leading data center cooling distributor, is an invaluable asset.
As a pioneer in data center cooling solutions, Climanusa deeply understands the challenges and opportunities brought by the AI era. Choose Climanusa as your trusted partner for the best data center cooling distributor solutions that ensure your infrastructure is not only ready for today but also for the future.
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–A.M.G–
