Chief Data Center Concerns Going Into 2025

February 6, 2025

Increased demand for data center capacity, driven by business applications and accelerated AI adoption, has changed the way data center operators think about higher-density servers and new technologies, including the idea of using AI to manage data center operations.

Many are investing and innovating more in their IT and facilities and employing external services. The effectiveness of these investments will shape the data center industry in the coming years as operators and owners contend with higher costs, greater demand, staffing shortages, and unpredictable workloads.

To better understand this challenge, the recently published Uptime Institute’s annual Global Data Center Survey highlights the practices and experiences of data center owners and operators in the areas of resiliency, sustainability, efficiency, staffing, cloud, and artificial intelligence. The survey asked more than 850 data center owners and operators, as well as over 750 vendors and consultants, about their key concerns.

Here are three reports that highlight operators' focus on sustainability, efficiency, staffing, and AI.

1. Higher Costs and Spending
Owning and operating data centers have become more expensive, continuing the upward trend since 2021. Although global inflation is slowing and some of the more severe supply chain issues are easing, and cost pressures remain stubbornly high.

More than half of the survey’s vendor respondents (51%) reported higher-than-normal data center spending patterns. Prices have gone up for energy, equipment, labor, construction, and infrastructure upgrades. 80% of the survey respondents said they were “somewhat” to “very” concerned about costs. This trend is likely to continue, though inflation has slowed; increasing demand in the market keeps prices high.

2. Uncertain Demands and High-Density Workloads

Even as AI and high-performance compute workloads gain more media attention, their broader industry impact will likely take time to materialize. Data center managers say the need to accommodate higher-density workloads is less of a concern than rising costs and energy efficiency. Having said that, 65% of operators were at least somewhat concerned about their ability to accommodate rising densities.

Although many industry stakeholders anticipate higher-density workloads, they recognize there’s more to that demand than generative AI. Operators say generative AI workloads haven’t yet dominated their data centers. The densest IT workloads supported today are still primarily business applications and high-performance computing (HPC). For most organizations, highly dense infrastructure for AI is still a future requirement.

Nearly 50% said densified infrastructure for business applications drove demand, followed by HPC with accelerators (33%), and generative AI accounted for just 15%.

3. Search for Higher Density Rack Servers

According to the survey, data center operators and owners are gradually shifting to more powerful racks. Typical rack power is edging up gradually, driven largely by the rise in silicon power — modern volume servers can use several hundreds of watts each when loaded, even without accelerators (such as GPUs).

Survey respondents also described the rate of change in rack density in their own facilities. Results showed that nearly a third of respondents reported rapid growth in rack power demand for recent deployments, with colocation deployments seeing the strongest uptick in rack power.

This upward trend is evident across the enterprise, colocation, and cloud/hosting segments. Upgrading from 6 kW to 9 kW per rack represents a 50% increase, which can translate to a corresponding rise in power usage at many facilities.

The Legrand Point of View

Raritan, we’re well ahead of these trends and working with market leaders, from enterprise to colocation companies to hyperscalers, to help them manage and mitigate these challenges. We have the largest selection of high-density rack PDUs with the highest kWs in the market today. Overall, there is a range of technologies we bring to bear, from enclosures to sensors, that help our customers cope with higher costs, deal with uncertainty, and address gradually increasing density. Our experience with stock and custom solutions gives organizations of all sizes a better foundation for coping with change.

To learn more about the Uptime Institute and their work, download the full report here or explore our intelligent Rack PDUs and Rack Management products here.