Equipment shortages may ease soon — but not for good reasons

When Uptime Institute Intelligence surveyed data center infrastructure operators about supply chain issues in August 2021, more than two-thirds of respondents had experienced some shortages in the previous 18 months. Larger operations bore the brunt of disruptions, largely due to shortages or delays in sourcing major electrical equipment (such as switchgear, engine generators and uninterruptible power supplies) and cooling equipment. Smaller technical organizations more commonly saw issues around getting IT hardware on time, rather than mechanical or power systems.

A shared gating factor across the board was the scarcity of some key integrated circuits, particularly embedded controllers (including microprocessors and field-programmable gate arrays, or FPGAs) and power electronics of all sizes. These components are omnipresent in data center equipment. On balance, respondents expected shortages to gradually ease but persist for the next two to three years.