AC vs DC power in the data centre
GE and Validus DC systems now provide a fully integrated Direct Current power infrastructure for data centres.
The principle benefit comes from the greater efficiency and lower heat output consumed by DC electricity compared to AC electricity. In addition the companies claim that using a DC power supply reduces the amount of electrical distribution equipment which reduces equipment costs, installation costs and reduces the size of the data centre for a given IT load. Another consequence is greater reliability through fewer single points of failure.
In essense, the system has fewer power conversions and transformations so produces less heat output and reduces the need for as much cooling.
The reduction in equipment greatly reduces the need for the typical component parts such as plastic, steel, copper and lead acid batteries.
It just remains to see how fast the take up is…
Update on the EU Code of Conduct
As the EU Code of Conduct approaches its first anniversary it is being updated to ensure best practice is updated and it stays relevant. You can find further details of the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres here.
The key updates to the Best Practices are:
- the lower humidity point should be 5.5C dew point to help eliminate wasteful energy use in dehumidifcation and rehumidification
- improvements to guide which Best Practices apply to which type of operator.
Flash memory is starting to be used to decrease latency and energy consumption of storage devices.
Hard drive capacity is increasing and cost per Gb is rapidly decreasing but performance has remained more or less flat over the past 10 years. This has created a real imbalance in the speed of processors vs. access to data from hard drives.
In order to increase hard drive performance enterprises are using costly strategies such as short stroking or over -provisioning hard drives. But flash memory can deliver a more cost-effective and energy efficient solution.
They still won’t replace hard drives, which will be useful for low latency needs where they provide a more cost effective solution. But where speed is required they can provide a tremendous advantage. For example, Sun this week introduced a 2TB flash array that consumes just 300 watts and can increase the speed of applications such as Oracle and mySQL by up to 10.
Iceland to have its own “cold rush”
Iceland is the latest in a series of geo-specific locations for mega data centres. The main benefit of locating in a specific locale is driven by cost savings. This can be as a result of favourable tax regimes as in competing US states; an abundant supply of natural energy such as hydro-electric and Yahoo’s decision to site its mega centere by Niagra Falls; or cool temperate climes that make the most energy intensive part of a data centre i.e. cooling that much cheaper.
TorontoHydro, a Canadian power company is offering incentives to the data centre market to become more efficient in partnership with one of their suppliers Softchoice . It seems that the incentives that an energy efficient data centre brings are not moving the market fast enough for the utility company’s liking. So, it is offering $300 per kW to reduce peak energy demand.
The reason being that in North America like many other areas, energy consumption is increasing more quickly than supplies can be generated to meet the demand. Even in the UK, if we do nothing it is forecast that we will have blackouts by 2016.
Keith Baskin, director of storage technologies for Softchoice’s enterprise architect group could have been talking to Keysource’s Sales Director James Cole, when he said “But there is no “magic bullet for optimizing a data centre”. “Virtualization, platform consolidation and deduplication will help, but really, you need to evaluate everything using a holistic approach. This begins with an assessment and a conversation (with customers)”.
Another key area to focus upon is storage, which is growing massively with a wide range of options for reducing energy consumption such as MAID storage. But as no two data centres are the same and everyone has different business drivers, it is necessary to look at the data centre as a whole and apply the best practice techniques wherever applicable.
1.2 is the new 2.0 (PUE that is)
It seems everyone wants to get in on the act with an energy efficient data centre these days. Keysource led the pack with their data centre at PGS in Weybridge, with a PUE of 1.2 a year ago – the most energy efficient data centre in Europe then and now.
The latest to join the “1.2 club” is NetApp with a 36,000-square-foot data centre with 2,166 racks of IT kit and a designed power load of nearly 25MW. Althought their maths may be a bit dodgy with a “claimed power reduction of 80% from the industry average of 2.0″…
There are many similarities between their approach and the industry leading PGS data centre. The average temperature is kept to 74 degrees F which reduces cooling costs. They use an air economizer; pressure-controlled room with modulating fans; cold aisle containment; and overhead air distribution that eliminates ductwork, reducing the energy needed for fans.
NetApp anticipate savings of $7.3m pa and a reduction of carbon output equalling 93,000 tons pa
Europes first annualised PUE of 1.2
Europe’s first annualised PUE of 1.2 has been released for a data centre designed, built and managed by Keysource of Horsham. It is the facility for PGS at Weybridge just outside London.
Although the PUE figure of 1.2 was much lauded at it’s launch a year ago, the real test has been the annualised PUE figure. The ability to maintain the energy efficicency rating throughout the ups and downs of the year.
Keysource attribute their success to two the following factors:
- a design which takes advantage of the latest thinking in data centre design such as cool and hot air separation
- the use of their innovative ecofris cooling modules which take the concept of free-cooling to a totally new level
Keysource are also a firm believer in the use of CFD modelling software which allows them to model the design in 3D before it is built which allows them to isolate and remove inefficient hot spots.
MAID storage
MAID or Massive Array of Idle Disks is increasingly being offered as a way of reducing the energy required for data storage. The principle is simple in that only the disks being used are spinning, which significantly reduces power consumption and prolongs the lives of the disk drives.
MAID technology is aimed at “persistant data” with anywhere between 25 and 50% of the disks spinning at any one time. There are two options MAID 1 and MAID 2, with the best solution being MAID 2 as MAID 1 provides a significant reduction on application performance as disk drives are turned off.
MAID 2 aims to deliver energy savings to the broadest set of applications without affecting their performance. This is achieved through intelligent pair management.
The benefits of MAID
MAID delivers a robust energy saving solution whilst using the relatively inexpensive disk technology to create an enterprise-class storage solution.
The Green Grid introduces new online tools
The Green Grid has extended its free online tools to cover a free cooling calculator. This tool helps data centre managers to define how much outside air – or free cooling – is available to assist in the cooling of their data centre. The tool also provides details about how you can make savings using water-side economisers.
Working together is a good start
The biggest problem to overcome in building and running a truly efficient data centre is communication. Read the press releases and you will find great examples of leading edge data centres with PUEs as low as 1.2 in the UK or even claims of 1.05 in the States! In most organisations however, these efficiencies are going to take a while to come to fruition because of a lack of internal communication and co-ordination of information and resources. Schemes such as the UK’s Carbon Reduction Commitment will go a long way to bridging these communication gaps by encouraging ways of saving money.
Before you even start looking at ways of saving money in data centres the will needs to be there, and in over half of all companies accorsing to a recent Gartner report it is little more than lip service if that. Part of the problem is that carbon reduction has often been seen as part of the CSR (corporate social responsibility) role which typically lies in big corporation’s marketing departments. Consequently, the role of CSR is often seen as greenwashing.
To be truly effective multi-disciplinary teams need to be established with energy management, finance, IT and CSR at the hub of these to get the most from them. Finance needs to understand the benefits an energy efficient data centre can provide; the energy department needs more influence; IT needs to take responsibility for its own energy budget; and CSR can help set targets and spread the good word about what they are doing.
Currently very few companies are doing this according to a recent Forbes article. Most of these divisions operate as silos with little meaningful discussion between them.
Given that globally, data centres represent 2% of total energy used, a typical 40% reduction in energy consumption, which is readily achievable, is a good dent in a rapidly growing energy consuming sector.
Although commercial buildings account for 18% and residential buildings 15% of worldwide energy consumption, these are fairly static proportions whereas data centres are one of the fastest growing consumers of electricity along with the airline industry. This is going to put it under increasingpressure to reduce energy consumption.
