How Robots Can Be Useful In Cloud Data Centers

According to a recent forecast by Gartner, by 2025 half of cloud data centers will be using sophisticated robots. The hope is that this will meet the increasing demand for storage volume in data centers with a simultaneous shortage of skilled workers.

Sophisticated robots equipped with artificial Intelligence and ML capabilities should help increase the operational efficiency of cloud data centers. The research and consulting firm Gartner predicts such use in half of cloud data centers by 2025; this could increase operational efficiency by 30 percent and help alleviate skills shortages. “There is a widening gap between the skilled workforce and the increasing demand for servers and storage in the data center,” said Sid Nag, research vice president at Gartner. While robots have long been used in sectors such as the automotive industry or manufacturing, the possibilities in data centers have so far been overlooked.

In data centers, according to Gartner, such robots could help with automation in these areas:

Server upgrades and maintenance: When servers are retired, it can be faster and more efficient to let industrial robots do the decommissioning and destruction of drives instead of humans.

Monitoring and security of the data center: Robots can increase physical security through various functions, such as temperature control using thermal sensors. For example, robot sensors sometimes provide more detailed data on the temperature in the server rack without having to install invasive physical hardware.

Use of AI/ML: Robots combined with AI and ML-supported technology can help to monitor and manage IT processes in the data center. For example, site reliability engineers can interact and communicate with the respective platform; these platforms, in turn, are able to learn from past situations.