Every digital activity, no matter how miniscule – for example, sending a message – needs storage. Unsurprisingly, a digitally savvy country like India that has over 700 million1 internet users, as of the end of 2022, is seeing massive growth in data centers (DCs). India is currently the world’s 13th largest DC market globally, with 138 data centres. The Investment Information and Credit Rating Agency (ICRA) expects a six-fold rise in DC capacity in the next six years, which means an overall, 4,900–5,000 MW of capacity addition, involving investments of Rs.1.50 lakh crore2.
Growing Demand for DCs
India’s digital economy is expected1 to reach $1 trillion by 2025, spurred by a growing base of smartphone users, affordable internet access and better network speeds. Moreover, digital services are not limited to urban India anymore, but are becoming ubiquitous across the country, including in rural areas. As per research by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), the number of rural internet users in India is increasing more than three times as quickly as that of urban users. The same report suggests that there will be 900 million internet users in India by 2025, led by rural growth. The impact of this will likely be another big increase in demand for data centers.
Moreover, organizations across industries today understand how valuable data is. In addition to storing consumer data at third party DCs, they are also increasingly storing data on-premises, also known as on-prem storage. As a result, hybrid data centers- a mix of cloud and on-prem storage – which have been prevalent for a long time, are increasing in popularity.
Growing popularity of Hybrid DCs
Both cloud and on-prem storage come with different sets of advantages and benefits. For example, cloud storage offers benefits such as unparalleled scalability, flexibility, and cost advantages as you only pay for the resources you use. On the other hand, on-prem storage is becoming popular again as it can offer organizations improved security and controls, and access to the data can be limited to a few people. Other benefits to moving data on-prem or at the local edge include better performance and accessibility as the data is on location, it can be accessed offline, which can also translate into cutting down on connectivity costs.
However, in case of on-prem or cloud storage, it is important to have adequate back-up and recovery plan of data, in case of data loss due to any reason.
Also Read: Shaping India’s AI journey with Shakti Cloud
Planning Storage for an On-Prem DC
To begin with it is important to understand the type of data stored on location. Is it hot data, which is needed for real-time insights, or is it cold data, which is not accessed or needed frequently? In case of fast data, an NVMe™ powered enterprise-class SSD is an ideal solution, such as the Ultrastar® DC SN655 NVMe™ SSD (Solid State Drives) from Western Digital that offers high-capacity, read-intensive performance for data-intensive applications. With dual-port redundancy and failover capability, end-to-end data protection and additional enterprise features, this enterprise-class SSD helps ensure that data is secure and available when needed. It offers high-capacity, up to 15.36TB*, and low-latency performance reaching up to 1.1M IOPs.
Senior Director – Marketing, India, Middle East & TIA, Western Digital.
If the data saved on-prem is not needed frequently, high-capacity, enterprise-class hard disk drives (HDDs) are the go-to solutions. Moreover, an enterprise should consider HDDs that are innovative and can help it cut down on cooling cost and are able to save huge amounts of data in as minimal of a footprint as possible. For example, Western Digital’s industry-leading, high-density Ultrastar hard drives with up to 22TB. These drives help store massive amounts of data reliably, cost-effectively, and energy efficiently. They are designed for optimal power supporting a variety of workloads. Additionally, the ever-expending storage requirements accentuate the need for storage platforms such as JBOD and JBOF, or ‘Just a Bunch of Disks’ and ‘Just a Bunch of Flash.’ Western Digital Ultrastar Data102 storage platform (JBOD) is configured with up to 102 HDDs in a compact and efficient form factor and offers up to 2.2PB of raw storage in 4U using the company’s 22TB HDDs. It also comes equipped with cooling efficient technology.
Overall, on-prem and cloud storage will not replace each other but complement each other. Irrespective of where data is stored, it is important to invest in infrastructure and storage solutions that are efficient, reliable, scalable, and sustainable.
