I was involved with a project with my friend Taimour in creating. staffing, managing and supplying Data Centers.
I am looking for information about how the Data Centers and the Environment and learned some amazing things from my friends in my LinkedIn network.
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The Success Stories series provides case studies from people about what it takes to become successful. Each of us is unique in our goals and aspirations, but we have things in common with others. Through the 10,000,000 people in my LinkedIn network we can share ideas and solutions that will help you achieve your goals. While I don’t always agree with all the comments I receive, I include all that are presented coherently and could help at least one of my readers.
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Wired
The answer will vary by the type of user and data center. Service providers have in the past had little motivation to achieve higher levels of efficiency or to lessen environmental impact, and in today’s supply constrained market, that still holds true, though there are marketing benefits for modest improvements. For single-tenant sites, the benefits of higher efficiency, and the corporate benefits of minimizing the environmental impact (noise, etc.) on the surrounding community can be substantial.
SVP IT Infrastructure at First Data Corporation
In
http://www.btplc.com/Societyandenvironment/index.CFM
Marketing Communications at Getronics
In addition for the need to become “green” (using less power and cooling as new processors consume more) data centers professionals are working on server virtualization, which many feel is more of a concept than a reality. Data centers with mainframes are finding it increasingly difficult to find support staff as these many of these experts are or have retired.
Data center outsourcing is increasing (studies show 8 to 13%) as the need for security and robust infrastructure increases.
Pre-Sales Engineering Consultant for IP Performance Ltd
I don’t know what eco-strategies are in place in North America, but over here in Europe and particularly the
The environmental pressures are expressed to businesses in the form of requirements for compliance to environmental regulations and legislations, such as the WEEE* directive or RoHS**. Added to these compliance issues are the business costs of managing the additional power and environmental requirements resulting from engineering more and more processing power into a smaller and smaller physical footprint (think BladeServers and 1U appliances).
Another concept, not yet incorporated into legislation but already loosely defined in marketing-speak and bandied about as a measure of an organisation’s eco-profile is the “carbon footprint”, which will take factors like power consumption, heating and heat dissipation, lighting, building materials into account, but also cost of support and maintenance in terms of employee travel to and from site, DR overheads, resilience and redundancy etc, etc, etc…
Vendors, Distributors, resellers and end customers are now moving to an understanding of these issues, and we are now seeing Datacenters being designed with those criteria in mind, so we are seeing the deployment of such hitherto esoteric ideas as:
- More space-efficient, reduced-footprint server and comms rack cabinets (nifty sliding/folding doors, better equipment access with narrower aisles)
- Water-cooled rack cabinets (3,500-fold efficiency increase on traditional aircon)
- Remote, converged and consolidated centralised management of *all* Datacenter elements (carbon footprint savings in terms of reduction of callouts, employee travel, subsistence, fuel, onsite heating/lighting etc)
- Next Generation, high-efficiency (0.96+) Power Management (extended runtime UPS/battery back-up/DC-AC rectification and power distribution)
- Less power consumption and higher output, and again, carbon footprint savings in terms of reduction of callouts, employee travel, subsistence, fuel, onsite heating/lighting etc)
…this is just a taster… there are more “joined-up” technologies emerging month-on-month. I recently attended a seminar on this very subject, run by a UK Distributor, Zycko. The links below are to vendors/manufacturers in their portfolio, but they are by no means unique – check out the technologies and then start researching the capabilities and offerings of your own local suppliers – most of the ones listed below are NA-based anyway.
*WEEE – Waste, Electrical & Electronic Equipment Directive
**RoHS – Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive
http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/weee/ – The WEEE Directive
http://www.rohs.gov.uk – The RoHS Directive
http://www.eaton.com – data center power management
http://www.usystemsnet.com – USystems ColdLogik Water Cooling solutions and USpace data center rack cabinets, wallmount boxes and accessories
- http://www.zycko.com/news/coverage/zycko-april07/Can_green_data_centres_exi…
- http://www.epicenterinc.com
- http://www.powerware.com
I just found this Zycko article with some pertinent Industry facts and figures for Data Centers and associated emissions/power draw.
http://www.zycko.com/news/coverage/zycko-april07/Can_green_data_centres_exist.pdf
Database Architect at Afiliascanada
Well, there are some obvious “environmental issues” surrounding data centers that center on the fact that they introduce a very high density of computing equipment:
1. Cooling requirements tend to be really hefty because of very high densities of both computers (e.g. – CPUs and memory) as well as sizable arrays of disk drives.
Of course, some benefits of “economies of scale” might be had if you can ensure high usage levels of all of the equipment. Unfortunately, the need for High Availability often means that the amount of hardware is immediately doubled or even tripled, with little opportunity to ensure High Usage.
2. The act of delivering expensive and delicate servers and components to the data center means that it has a remarkable density of trash generation in the form of the packaging used to safely deliver these items.
(And note that if you have redundant servers, that means delivering packing materials for those redundant servers…)
We once got warned by a data center that the stack of empty boxes was getting to be a fire hazard; that’s one of the risks of aggressive build-out plans.
Vendors that make it possible to return and reuse that packaging could provide some big benefits in this regard.
3.
I have heard rumors that fuel cells might be well suited to replace some of these “environmental nasties,” but various types of the common sorts of fuel cells introduce significantly dangerous components of their own.
4. All of the above need cooling, hence mandating *enormously* powerful air conditioning units.
There’s quite the multiplicative requirement, here; you need servers, and duplicates, and cooling for them all, and power and cooling to cover ALL of this.
These are all pretty much downsides to
In principle, there could be an environmental upside, though it’s unlikely, thus far. And that is that if you can push most of the computing power into the data center, you could then have Really Wimpy hardware at the office, that is, non-powerful near-diskless machines that are small and consume little power, such as the AMD Geode, which consumes just 5 watts.
Unfortunately, deploying modern versions of Windows on the desktop pretty much mandates having as big and powerful a desktop computer as you can get; I doubt we’ll see any improvement on that without Microsoft becoming marginalized in favor of Linux and MacOS.
InfoSec Inc. – Senior Security Specialist – RACF z/OS – Doc.Farmer@gmail.com – LION – OpenNetworker – 6100+/10.8M+ Total
I did an article some years back on designing a secure data centre, but it’s not available online. Contact me offline at Doc.Farmer@gmail.com, and I’ll see if I can dig up a soft copy.
Okay. Let’s see…
- Data centres which are “green” usually involve mainframes. Why? One mainframe equals hundreds of standard servers, which generate far more heat (requiring greater A/C capacity), pull more energy, require more maintenance, etc. A mainframe is also more cost effective from an operational standpoint, far more stable and far more secure than distributed platforms.
- Building design is critical. The building itself should never be higher than two stories, with the data centre on the ground (first) floor, and NO WINDOWS on that level. IF you have a floor above that, windows should be narrow and high, fully sealed, and not able to be opened. Also, those windows should be spaced and limited, as well as triple-sealed (filmed to block UV and IR, as well as a blast shield).
- Foundation. Multiple heavy-duty reinforced concrete pilings (at least 2 metres in depth), with the ground floor on a concrete plinth at least 1.5m above grade.
- Walls (exterior). Poured concrete, with rebar, in a two-wall structure (with a 4 to 6 inch void filled with moisture-resistant insulation – R-30 or greater). Each wall should be at least 8 inches thick.
- Walls (interior). Poured concrete with rebar, and an insulated void between computer rooms (R-20 minimum – also deadens sound). These should be load bearing, and at the centre of the building – the external areas should be for storage, power conditioning/battery storage, operator bridge, building security, etc. For fire safety, they should be floor-to-ceiling as well.
- Walls (non-load bearing). Conventional construction here, but do NOT use wood 2×4′s – instead, use steel that has been sealed in a anti-rust coating (just painting it with Rustoleum works fine, provided you do the cut-ends as well).
- Doors (interior – computer rooms). Use airlocks to keep the cool air inside the data centres. Remember, your mainframe rooms should generally be kept colder than areas where Humans dwell. Also, go with a “dark” room – lights only turn on when occupied, turn off automatically after x minutes.
- Doors (exterior). Absolutely use airlocks for security and for energy conservation.
- Roof. DO NOT USE A FLAT ROOF!!!! Slanted A-frame roof shape – as you go further north, make that roof steeper and steeper (to slough off snow/ice). Heavily insulate and ventilate the roof. R-45 minimum.
- Heating/AC. Even in warmer climates, you will need heating. Suggestion – where geology permits, do several deep bores and use geothermal heat exchange in conjunction with standard A/C.
- Emergency power. Have your power come in from two different directions (and two different substations). Also have a diesel generator (you can go biodiesel here if you wish) which can handle 120% of total building capacity for 72 hours minimum. You will need a fuel dump. Make sure it’s underground, and make sure you have a spill-pan below the storage (even for biodiesel). Also, if going biodiesel, make a deal with your local Krispy Kreme. You’re going to be giving them business anyway (trust me, IT runs on Krispy Kreme and Folgers just as much as data and electricity). Besides, when Krispy Kreme biodiesel burns, it’ll make the whole neighbourhood smell like doughnuts. Watch out for lawsuits from any nearby Weight Watchers offices, though.
- Drainage. Have your roof spilloff go into underground cisterns for emergency water storage (you’ll need some filtration. Also, make sure the parking lot has a 2° to 3° slope, back to front, with drainage to separate cisterns (or straight to storm sewers). Internal drainage is important too – make sure each main computer room has at least 2 gravity drains in the subfloor, with one-way valves…
Sr. System Administrator
From a staffing point of view, you will need senior staff for networking, power and cooling. You will also need to build a NOC — which is basically just a call center that generates tracking tickets and provides ‘remote hands’.
The critical part of running a
If you are going to build your own data center, aside from the suggestions already mentioned by the other responders, you must consider the actual address of the building.
It should be in an area where the telcos can easily dig and lay fiber, and where you can have redundant power sources — find a place that sits along 2 (or more) power grids, has good water supply and is not in a storm or earthquake corridor.
Partner at Accenture
Take a look at the new servers from Sun Microsystems. They were recently certified by Pacific Gas & Electric to receive customer rebates for installation due to their dramatic reduction in power consumption and reduction in ancillary power needed to run data center cooling systems. Their AMD based servers are much more efficient than their competition.
Director at Object Matrix
Our company uses climatecare.org to offset servers we put into customer premises. It may not be the perfect solution but it is a start. The introduction of solid state disk technology will start to cool down data centres a fraction..
For more information on data centers, power utilisation and the environment take a look at these blogs:
Robin Harris StorageMojo blog:
http://storagemojo.com/2007/07/26/powering-a-warehouse-sized-computer-part-…
Jon Toigo DrunkenData blog:
http://www.drunkendata.com/?p=1253
Both are respected commentators on the storage industry and have a sizable following.
Owner, Portakal Teknoloji
Last week, I was having lunch at IBM Turkey and the very same data centers vs. environment question popped out. What we discussed was the large electricity consumption due to cooling and its effects.
One thing we saw was that technologies that tend to decrease the number of rack-mount cases also tend to decrease the electricity used for cooling.
Blades are for starters.
Virtualization (this is what we do) is another way to stack more servers into less number of cases. Of course virtualization is not only a mainframe feature. Using Xen you can virtualize a large number of Linux/Windows instances on a moderate Intel server. If you would consider Xen virtualization for an option, drop me a line.
Data center consolidation should also be watched for. As security features enhance, this will be the normal way of doing things. We are currently considering even co-location of our remote-desktop server.
Data Centre Engineer
Backup power, i.e. generators, isn’t always going to keep your data centre up during power outages. UPS’s break, generators fail to start and server still drop. Power needs to be a big concern; (1) make sure you can get enough to your facility and (2) get a good specialist electrician in and discuss ways to filter ‘dirty’ power etc. I have seen generators the size of freight trains come online and take 5.0kVA UPS’s out like it is no ones business. A weekly check of all electrical kit is a must.
Fire protection, anti-flooding etc are all fundamentals, and I think it is still overlooked too often – these are critical things you must get right first time. Data Centres still burn down…
Staff can be tricky, but you certainly want an experienced manager, two senior engineers and two engineers. One of the senior engineers should be Cisco certified to a high level, and other members of the group should have a combined knowledge of cabling, security etc. All should be well up on redhat, microsoft etc.
The NOC is important; multiple displays (ipmonitor/nagios/ticket counters etc), CCTV monitors, plenty of data points and so on. I myself am sitting in a NOC with 5 colleagues and 8 monitors over our heads – we also have a 12’ by 5’ windows into the data centre from here so we can oversee everything.
Impact on the environment…. I don’t concern myself with that too much to be honest, my job is to keep everything running and secure while minimising downtime, and I think it is best to let people get on with what they do best, and to get someone else in to save the earth.
My last opinion: Blade centres aren’t all that great – 14 servers + two backplanes = a lot of room for failure. They also generate a lot of heat in one small area, and draw too much power.
Senior Engineer Global Strategist
According to the most recent report to congress, servers and data centers consumed about 1% of the total electrical consumption in the
EPA is currently evaluating requirements for EnergyStar data centers and servers. At this time there are several industry groups engaged in efficiency ion servers and data centers. That would be Climate Savers Computing Initiative, The GreenGrid, SPECpower to name a few. Also governments are addressing efficiency in operations and in the data center and servers; EPA and the EU. Utilities have been engaged in data center efficiency improvements and have motivated these improvements specifically in areas where energy resources are thin. The leaders in this area are PG&E, Austin Energy, NYSERDA, NSTAR and others.
This is also an area of significant sensitivity to corporations. Since the most sensitive data and the majority of revenue streams depend upon the operational availability of data centers and the security of the networks supporting them. As the standards-setting moves forward, several points are clear:
· real reduction in energy consumption across the board is needed
· the focus is on the components of the data center
· a holistic top down review of efficiency in the data center and servers is required
· this is not once and done, but a process of data center and server evolution.
Social Entrepreneur, Sustainopreneur, Innovator, Idea Generator, Networker (wannabe), Voluntary Activist, Founder
Some data centers in
Additionally I think Sun’s Project Black Box is an interesting solution for mobile, environmental friendly data center solutions.
Technical Manager and Infrastructure Solutions Architect
Disaster Recovery – This is interesting as a lot of large organisations have outsourced data centers to get it at a reasonable cost. Getting your underlying storage, network and server infrastructure setup correctly and tested is a major issue. This will directly affect your capability to meet your
Power – Is the room built out with seperate feeds and phases.
NOC – Yes, you need it. Is it a good idea to put it into a particular data center? See Disaster Recovery … This leads on to lights out operation. Also are all your users in the same timezone?
Engineering Software Leader at Lutron Electronics jmurdoch@lutron.com
Whether you’re planning a new facility or revamping an existing site, the environmental issues surrounding a data centre boil down to just a few questions:
One-time startup issues
· How much construction debris will be generated (and thus must be removed and presumably landfilled)?
· What are the additional construction costs necessary to implement a “green” solution for long-term operational benefits?
Long-term issues
· What is the cost of energy consumed by servers and other equipment in the data centre?
· What is the cost of cooling to deal with heat given off by equipment in the space?
· What is the cost of lighting for the space?
· What is the cost of cooling for the lighting in the space?
· What are the environmental costs of disposing of building consumables (particularly fluorescent lamps)?
You may not think of the cost of lighting as a big deal–or you may think of it as a necessary evil. You have 24,000 square feet of space, you have 675 lighting fixtures, and that’s kind of that. In fact, those lighting fixtures are burning up a lot of electricity, costing you a lot of money, and costing you a chunk of money for HVAC to cool the heat they give off. And, periodically, you have to replace all of those fluorescent lamps–and dispose of the lamps in an environmentally responsible manner. (Fluorescent lamps work because they contain mercury–which is a dangerous toxin.)
The math is simple: a two-lamp T8 4 foot long fixture–the typical overhead light–burns 64 watts of electricity. If the data centre has 675 fixtures, that’s 43 KW of power for lighting. And, on top of that, you’ll spend another 17 KW on HVAC to cool the heat given off by those lamps. Figure out how to reduce your lighting costs, and you’ll save a bundle of cash and a lot of energy.
How can you reduce your lighting costs? Occupancy sensors and digitally-addressable fluorescent ballasts. Most of a data centre’s space is filled with hardware, but rarely entered by people. Digitally addressable ballasts “listen” to occupancy sensors–when somebody is in the area, the lights come on–otherwise, the lights are off, saving heat and energy. If you use dimming ballasts, you can provide a low level of light in corridor spaces for safety, which automatically rise to brighter levels when people walk nearby.
How much energy you save depends upon how often you have people in the space. In a typical office environment (where there are people in the space all the time) we typically see energy savings of 60% or greater. In a data centre application, assuming that people are typically not in the space, we would expect substantially greater savings. Even if you just save 60% of your energy consumption, that’s 36 KW (including cooling) that you’re taking out of your data centre, and off the grid.
You only have light (and the resultant heat) where and when you need it. You save lots and lots of energy. And, as a side benefit, you radically increase the lifetime of your fluorescent lamps, prolonging the day when those lamps (and the hazardous mercury inside them) have to be recycled.
(Caveat: the examples shown here refer to a data centre of 24,000 sq. ft., using a power density of 1.8 watts/sq. ft. [which is the current code requirement in the
Spend some time with a spreadsheet–the results are pretty impressive. .
Owner, Searching in the Business Development field
I work for a facility services company and as such we provide janitorial, engineering as well as other services that property owners and managers utilize to keep up their properties.
Within the property ownership/management area there is a growing interest in “green clean” services. These services provide the same level of functionality, but at a much less cost to the environment. The cost of these services is usually comparable to the traditional methods, so price is not the issue. The main issue is education the staffs of the building to properly use these products and methodology. Also, as a part of the “green building” emphasis is to look at energy consumption. Many buildings are now switching to different types of lighting, using automated on-off switches for non-essential electronic equipment, alternate sources of energy creation (solar panels on the roofs, for instance), landscaping not only the outside of the buildings, but also creating roof gardens and interior atriums to provide a natural air conditioning effect.
For data centers, the main problem is energy consumption. Because most of these are mission critical centers, there is a need to reduce consumption without losing functionality. Effective “clean room” techniques can reduce dust and other airborne pollutants which ensure proper airflow for optimal cooling efficiency. Another way is for data centers to space management tools to effectively position their equipment to reduce crowding and increasing air flow. There is a company my wife used to work with, Aperture Technologies, which provides such a tool for effective resource management and planning.
Obviously, data centers will continue to grow and will need to face many challenges. It will be very interesting to watch it’s development.
Marketing, Business, Web, Startup, Strategy – Hire me! –> See more in my Specialties section
One huge issue is power consumption. The drive to higher densities using blades is concentrating heat generation in small spaces. At the same time, the conventional cooling systems are not designed for this situation. Result is huge over use of power.
ASHRAE is the body at the forefront of this problem in the
Also check out the IEEE and IEEE Computer Society.
Owner, best4funds inc
In Network point of view, all services and route has to be redundant which one default and one back up path for each router and switch, data has to be secure and backup daily, all layer 2 and 3 devices needs backup plan and avoid any network bottleneck, in some case Storage Area Network is also a very good solution for data center as well
Delivering Creative and Innovative Technical Solutions
From an electric utility perspective, the issue with data centers is their high power density, i.e. the amount of energy they consume per sq ft. Obviously most of this is associated with the cooling of the facility as air conditioning equipment is one of the biggest consumers of electric power.
In order to make data centers more environmentally friendly, efforts should be focused on reducing their energy footprint. Reducing sources of heat in the computing devices such as the CPU, hard drives (motors), and the AC/DC transformers would be a great start. Examples of existing technologies to do that are software to throttle the CPU clock when idle, solid state storage devices, and using a central AC/DC converter for all computing units.
Also, designing the facilities to efficiently transfer the heat away from the computing devices as opposed to focusing on forced air cooling of the entire facility is another way of reducing energy consumption. I have worked with generators that with the proper equipment can use their exhaust heat to create chilled water. Maybe further efficiencies can be achieved by drawing the “waste heat” from a data center into that application.
Group Information Security Officer
I am in the process of working through a new datacenter build with our business and as ever there are many aspects that try and thwart our plans but our biggest problem is power.
Our area runs on self generated power so power is not available in a high enough quantity. To resolve this, we looked to “green” PSU’s for our servers. This not only reduced the power consumption, but reduces the heat output thereby reducing the air conditioning requirements and further power. The cost saving of requiring less air conditioning helped offset the cost of replacing the PSU’s.
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I’ve been thinking the same and found this site called mycarbontracker.com that sells carbon credits to offset the electricity used by our servers. This is the only service that I found that takes what we emit out of the environment for the entire year. The others say they plant trees and take methane out of the environment. We did a large data center based in California with mycarbontracker.com to make our servers carbon neutral and reduce our impact on the environment.
Check out the site http://www.mycarbontracker.com/