Cost, AI, and staffing are biggest concerns for data centers

Rising costs, AI concerns and staffing challenges are among the top issues facing data center leaders in 2024, according to Uptime Institute’s latest survey data. Data center teams are working to balance higher rack power density and future capacity needs with capital investments and staffing limitations.

Uptime Institute’s 14^th annual Global Data Center Survey included insights from 1,631 respondents, including more than 850 enterprise companies and data center operators, across 16 vertical industries worldwide. For the first time in several years, cost bubbled to the top of the list of concerns for those surveyed, according to Andy Lawrence, executive director of research at Uptime Institute.

“The cost of building and operating data centers, after a fairly sustained period where [costs were] drifting downwards, has gone up in the last several years,” said Lawrence, during a webinar sharing the survey results. Inflation is partly to blame, Lawrence said, “but it’s also driven by the supply chain issues which followed on from Covid, high energy prices, staff shortages, and the overall really strong demand picture. Cost is clearly a big issue.”

Survey respondents — which include enterprise companies and colocation providers — ranked the top issues they were either very or somewhat concerned over. With rising energy prices, inflation, and growing demand for data center services, cost tops the list of digital infrastructure management concerns for data center operators:

• Cost: 80%
• Lack of qualified staff: 71%
• Improving energy performance for facilities equipment: 69%
• Forecasting future data center capacity requirements: 68%
• Accommodating significantly denser IT: 65%
• Improving energy performance for IT: 64%

Mixed results for AI

The hype around AI could pay off for many data center operators as more vendors incorporate the technology into their products, but the survey results also point to a waning trust with the technology.

Uptime Institute found that 94% of respondents see benefits in using AI in their data center operations; the opportunity to drive more efficiencies and fill skills gaps are among the top motivators.

Top ways AI could benefit data center operations:

• Increased facility efficiency: 58%
• Lower risk of human error: 55%
• Increased staff productivity: 45%
• Improved IT performance: 43%
• Lower risk of equipment failure or outages: 42%
• Reduced maintenance/service costs: 37%

Yet the results also show that trust in AI has fallen for the third consecutive year; 42% of respondents in this year’s survey said they would not trust AI to make operational decisions in a data center, even assuming the AI has been adequately trained with historic data. This represents an increase from 2022, when 24% of respondents said they would not trust AI, and 2023, when 37% said they do not trust AI to make decisions.

Despite the hype around AI, the densest IT workloads supported today across data centers are primarily business applications and high-powered computing (HPC).

Workloads driving the highest density deployments in data centers include:

• Densified infrastructure for business applications: 49%
• High performance computing with accelerators: 33%
• High-performance computing without accelerators: 19%
• Generative AI training: 15%
• Generative AI inference: 8%
• AI training (other than generative): 5%

With the rise of AI workloads, data center operators are challenged to accurately predict and plan for future capacity requirements, according to Uptime.

“The million-dollar question the industry is struggling with right now is how much of this AI is there really going to be, how much bigger will the installation be, how much denser is the installation going to be. It’s something we’re working and trying to bring some clarity to, but it’s a difficult challenge,” said Chris Brown, chief technical officer at the Uptime Institute. “It’s something data center operators are going to be struggling with for the next few years.”

Staffing shortages persist

Staffing shortages continue to represent an elevated risk in data center operations, according to Uptime’s latest findings.

“If you have inadequate staffing, that’s a risk to data centers. We are seeing some of our clients not being able to find staff to fully staff their data centers properly, which results in people working longer and more hours, which means they are more likely to make a mistake,” said Brown. “They are also adding more remote monitoring and remote control to manage sites from a centralized location, to maximize the staff that they do have. That creates another threat vector for cybersecurity issues because your critical equipment needs to be connected to a network that’s connected to the outside world.”

The skills challenge hasn’t worsened significantly in this year’s report, but the persisting challenges resulting from a lack of staff continue to accumulate. According to the survey, data center operators are experiencing significant gaps in skills among staff across several critical areas:

• Operations junior/mid-level staff: 39%
• Electrical: 33%
• Operations management: 32%
• Mechanical: 30%
• Cloud architecture/development: 25%
• Senior management/strategy: 20%
• Cabling/IT: 16%
• Other: 6%

The most recent survey also revealed that staffing shortages cause deferred maintenance across facilities because there are not enough people to perform the necessary maintenance tasks.

“It is basically causing elevated risk across data centers everywhere due to a lack of staffing,” Brown said.

Read more about data center trends:

• Data centers unprepared for new European energy efficiency regulations
• 5 data center predictions: Surging demand and tighter rules squeeze operations
• Network connectivity issues are leading cause of IT service outages
• 10 things to know about data-center outages
• IT to shoulder more responsibility for data center sustainability