Optimizing Data Center TCO - An In-Depth Analysis and Sensitivity Study

Explore a comprehensive conference presentation where Manzur Rahman delves into data center Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) optimization, particularly relevant in the AI era. Learn how TCO encompasses acquisition, operational, and maintenance costs while evaluating cost-effective hardware solutions including GPUs, storage, and AI chips. Understand the critical components of TCO, including direct costs (materials, labor, energy) and indirect costs (overheads, cooling, carbon tax), along with the normalization method for calculating cost per terabyte effective per month per rack. Discover Solidigm's sophisticated TCO model that incorporates dynamic variables like hardware configuration, drive replacement cycles, and workload mixes, while considering the time value of money, maintenance, disposal costs, and greenhouse gas taxes. Examine detailed comparisons between HDD and SSD racks under various scenarios, revealing how SSDs can deliver significant TCO benefits through optimized replacement cycles, capacity utilization, and data compression. Gain insights into how high-density QLC SSDs can reduce TCO compared to HDDs, despite higher upfront costs, through superior performance, extended replacement cycles, and improved capacity utilization, making them particularly suitable for AI-focused data center environments.