HYPERSCALE
What makes a data centre hyperscale? The term hyperscale isn’t a protected one, and the lines between hyperscale facilities and enterprise, colocation and telecom data centres can sometimes become blurred. However, there are a few widely agreed-upon characteristics that separate hyperscale facilities from their counterparts: 30
Hyperscale data centres are owned and operated by the companies they support, usually a Tier One operator like AWS, Apple or Facebook, as opposed to a Colocation data centre, which leases its capacity to third parties. Hyperscale facilities are big. Most experts tend to agree that any data centre with more than 500 cabinets, or at least 10,000 square feet of floor space, is a hyperscaler. Usually, a facility with 40MW or less capacity is considered to be an enterprise data centre. Hyperscale facilities have the ability to get much, much bigger. Think
DECEMBER 2020
about scale as a verb. Hyperscale data centres are built to be expanded to meet the ever-growing demands of the companies that build them. The ability to functiont at hyperscale. The potential challenges of handling such huge quantities of data mean that hyperscale facilities are designed to a different sttandard than smaller data centres.