Reengineering the Data Center to
be "Green"
... maximizing energy efficiency
does have a measurable ROI
by CEO Alan Mamane
Rapidly rising energy costs have
had a major impact on what we pay to
drive our cars, heat our homes, and
feed our families. And yes, data center
operational costs have also been heavily
impacted by the rising costs of energy.
Especially the cost of energy needed
to power and cool our facilities, computer
rooms and data centers. In the past
year while we have all heard more than
our share of manufacturers professing
their products to be "Green", but few
have demonstrated objective life-cycle
costs and ROI (Return on Investment)
data supporting their energy efficient
offering. Even with a lack of solid
product data, the good news is that
going green in the data center does
indeed have a measurable ROI, can significantly
reduce your organization's energy costs,
and can be achieved with a minimal amount
of upfront costs.
| The Green IT Bandwagon |
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| In August of 2007, the Environmental
Protection Agency published
a report to congress on "Server
and Data Center Energy Efficiency".
This report detailed the rapidly
growing energy costs of data
centers ($4.5 billion in 2006,
$7.4 billion projected by 2011)
and the dramatic increase in
data center power consumption
(61 billion kWh in 2006, 100
billion projected by 2011).
The EPA report also explored
implementing a new ENERGY STAR®
benchmark for data centers.
Since the report's publication,
most major IT manufacturers
announced "Green" products and
initiatives. The EPA deserves
kudos in trying to improve energy
efficiency in data centers,
but with so many competing manufactures
now claiming to have energy
efficient products, the prudent
approach is to compare competing
technologies and evaluate the
energy consumption and life-cycle
costs of all your new IT acquisitions.
Even more important to your
data center strategy is first
gaining a solid holistic understanding
of your data center environment
and critical risk factors prior
to investing in any new technologies.
|
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The IT Manufacturer Selection
Dilemma
Though there are lots of extremely talented
and ethical people working for the IT
manufacturers whose products fill your
computer room or data center, the obvious
reality is that their job security depends
on their ability to convince you of
their products'superiority. During
the 20+ years since I started my IT
career as a Systems Engineer with one
of the largest global manufacturers
of computers and technology products,
I have never heard any manufacturer's
representative sincerely recommend going
with a superior competing product or
solution. Also important to keep in
mind is the exponential improvements
in technologies we have all seen and
how often we have seen competing vendor
technologies leapfrog another. Even
if a manufacturer could maintain their
superior technical edge in one product
area, their diversification efforts
into other technology areas has seldom
achieved the same accolades. The hot
sales buzz these days is in convincing
you that they have the most green and
energy efficient products. In determining
how to optimize your data center for
energy efficiency, it is key to review
independent test results and maintain
a vendor and technology agnostic approach.
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
The Data Center Manager's Reality
I have had the great fortune during
my long technical career to have met
with lots of Data Center and Facility
Managers and have visited many of the
world's largest and most impressive
data centers in North America, Europe,
and Asia. Unfortunately, many of these
highly skilled Data Center Managers
and Computer Room IT professionals are
often overworked, and underappreciated.
Regardless of how well they manage to
keep their systems up and humming the
majority of the time, they too often
only hear from their managers and non-technical
colleagues when they are having issues
with down time or system performance.
The mantra often heard for datacenter
managers is "Uptime, Uptime, Uptime...",
and the press loves to talk in terms
of a 99.99% goal. Though uptime is what
our IT professionals deliver the vast
majority of the time, there are routine
maintenance times, upgrades to servers
(Moore's law (transistors on computer
processors double approximately every
two years), and systems do indeed go
down. The dread IT professionals face
is downtime due to system failure, lost
revenues due to downtime, and naturally
dealing with those colleagues and managers
who are impacted and frustrated by that
downtime.
Traditionally downtime and not efficiency
is what IT professionals are often evaluated
on. As such, it should be no surprise
that their biggest concern is not how
energy efficient they are running their
power and cooling systems. When we are
talking about the most strategic IT
Equipment deployed in our data centers,
especially our servers, downtime due
to heating / airflow issues is the principal
concern. To minimize the overheating
concern, many IT professionals have
resorted to flooding their data center
with excess AC (Air Conditioning). Recently
I visited such a data center belonging
to a huge multi-national corporation.
They are working to make this data center
more energy efficient now, but for years
with all their resources and conviction,
they too flooded their computer room
with far more AC cooling then needed
to insure minimal downtime. Despite
how power intensive and costly deploying
excess air conditioning is, it is still
an extremely common reality for many
computer rooms and data centers.
CFD Layout (overcooled Computer Room)
ASHRAE is a global leader in setting
data center cooling standards. ASHRAE's
Technical Committee 9.9 (ASHRAE TC 9.9)
recommends air entering the servers
in the cold aisle to be between 18°C
to 27°C (64.4°F to 80.6°F) and a
humidity due point of 5.5C to 15C. Our data center managers keep
up on the latest recommended ASHRAE
Inlet temperature and humidity for our
servers, but they can't know what they
can't measure. Though we can walk though
the computer room or down a row of server
racks and notice obvious hot spots or
blasts of cold air, we cannot easily
guess at air temperature or air pressure
or if the inlet side of our servers
are getting too much or too little air
cooling. This too leads to IT professionals
over cooling IT equipment to minimize
downtime. I will talk more on data center
measurement later in this article.
Many corporate executives have limited
if any comprehension of the "IT magic"
that lets their laptop connect to the
network or indeed the technology that
runs their company seamlessly on a daily
basis. Therefore, another data center
issue leading to energy inefficiency
is management expectations of their
IT people. As many of these IT professionals
have engineering backgrounds and other
technical certifications, they are often
expected to be experts in every technical
area and discipline. Expecting a Cisco
or Microsoft certified engineer to be
an expert in HVAC, is the equivalent
in medicine of expecting your pediatrician
to perform heart surgery or your podiatrist
to provide recommendations on lowering
your cholesterol.
This exaggerated expectation of IT
bandwidth has historically had a very
negative impact on data center energy
efficiency. When a IT professional doesn't
have sufficient time, training, or expertise
in a peripheral technical area, the
result is lack of time devoted to proper
due diligence and an overreliance on
less then objective vendor "facts".
And, unlike the famous scene from "Miracle
on 34th Street" when Santa recommends
competing Gimbels over Macys, your vendors
will seldom intentionally talk themselves
out of a sale.
If all you have is a hammer, everything
looks like a nail
It is good to keep this famous Bernard
Baruch quote in mind when evaluating
your cooling / AC strategy. Expecting
an AC equipment manufacturer to recommend
cooling practices that minimize the
need for buying more CRAC units or AC
equipment is like walking into a Hummer
showroom and expecting the salesperson
to recommend the car industry's latest
hybrid SUVs. If you are lucky you might
get a helpful technical resource from
an AC vendor to talk about hot aisle
/ cold aisle best practices. And if
you are really lucky, you might be able
to wrestle some info out of them on
the energy efficiency savings of cold
aisle containment vs. hot aisle containment.
The challenge in this approach is an
energy efficient green datacenter requires
less cooling equipment thus mitigating
the need to buy as much or even any
additional chillers or CRAC units from
them.
CFD layout showing hot aisle / cold
aisle containment issues
PUE and DCiE
PUE and its reciprocal
DCiE are now widely accepted energy
measurement standards that were proposed
by the Green Grid to help computer room
managers determine how energy efficient
their data centers are.
PUE = Power Usage Effectiveness
(PUE)
DCiE = Data Center Efficiency
There is a description
of PUE/DCiE in layman terms later in
the article.
You can't control or manage what
you don't measure
Having an holistic understanding
or your computer room or data center's
energy consumption is a key first step
in being able to determine the appropriate
steps necessary to improve your energy
efficiency. Measuring should be used
as an ongoing tool in your overall data
center strategy. CFD measurement at
multiple heights in a row of racks along
with air pressure measurement under
floor tiles can not only help you insure
that you are getting enough cool air
to the inlet of your servers, it can
help you maintain airflow to the recommended
ASHRAE level to all IT equipment. This
data can also help you eliminate hot
aisle / cold aisle containment issues
(hot air leaking into the cold aisles
and vice versa). With proper power measurement
of your overall data center IT equipment
and infrastructure, you will be able
to determine your PUE and DCiE. As PUE
/ DCiE are industry standards, determining
your data center's energy efficiency
rating will enable you enable you to
compare how efficient your facility
is compared with other data centers
around the world. It also helps you
set a benchmark you can track, report,
and continually improve. Keeping your
data center energy efficient should
be an ongoing process. After determining
your facility's efficiency rating, you
implement power and cooling best practices
to improve efficiency and then monitor
how those changes improved your PUE/DCIE.
And as you add additional energy efficient
IT assets, the process continues showing
how much less energy consumption your
facility is using. Improvements in your
DCiE and PUE correlate to improved efficiency,
which in turn demonstrate a measurable
reduction in your company's or organization's
power bill.
Where Does Energy Go? (source: Green
Grid)
42U is a Green Grid member
Why Concentrate on
Cooling and Infrastructure for Energy
Efficiency
It is important to understand that
any Watts saved on power efficient servers,
storage systems, and other IT equipment
do indeed have a significant cascading
impact on the overall power and cooling
you need for your data center. An overall
efficiency plan should include careful
planning on server virtualization and
life-cycle costs of all IT assets, but
as the chart above demonstrates, 70%
of Data Center Energy is consumed by
Infrastructure with 45% being the Cooling
and environmental equipment used to
maintain proper IT equipment temperatures
and airflow. A solid data center energy
efficiency strategy requires continuous
cooling and power measurement and benchmarking.
What is PUE?
What is DCiE? ... in layman's terms
Companies and organizations need
IT equipment to provide the products
and services they offer, handle transactions,
provide security, and to run and grow
their businesses. The larger a company
/ organization grows the greater the
need to house their computer equipment
in a secure environment. IT equipment
includes computer servers, hubs, routers,
wiring patch panels and other network
equipment. Depending on size, that secure
environment is called a wiring closet,
a computer room, a server room, or a
data center. In addition to the
energy needed to run that IT equipment,
electric power is utilized for lights,
security, backup power, and to keep
the environmental factors in these rooms
at temperature and humidity levels that
will minimize down time due to heat
issues. All IT equipment (and
anything run on electricity) generates
heat. In a room filled with racks
of computers and other IT equipment
a significant amount of your energy
costs are incurred by specialized data
center cooling and power equipment deployed
to keep your servers and other IT equipment
up and running. Heat problems
in data centers are a leading cause
of downtime.
Power Usage Effectiveness - PUE (source:
Green Grid)
The Good News - Green
Data Centers do have a measureable ROI!
Going green in the data center does
indeed have a measurable ROI, can significantly
reduce in your organization's energy
costs, and can be achieved with a minimal
amount of upfront costs. Before making
any sizable investments in energy efficient
technologies like flywheel UPS systems,
liquid cooling, in-row cooling, or air-side
economizers; measure and benchmark your
current environment to determine your
current cooling and airflow issues along
with benchmarking your DCiE and PUE.
An excellent place to
start is looking at power and cooling
best practices which are often relatively
easy to implement and relatively inexpensive.
Check your hot aisle/cold aisle layout
- does all your IT equipment face the
same direction or intake air from the
same side of the server rack. It sounds
obvious but CFD reports from major companies
show a surprising amount equipment being
mounted the wrong way. Consider
CRAC covers, blanking panels, and sealing
cable openings with raised floor grommets.
Speak with experts, read up on and consider
cold aisle containment and hot aisle
containment methods.
Corporations and business
leaders are feeling economic pressures
as the cost of energy rises. This not
only impacts their data center operation
costs, but also their plans for supporting
new pieces of IT equipment. They, along
with public policy makers, also realize
that energy consumption as a whole is
a critical issue. This, combined with
the move towards reduced carbon emissions
has all involved looking for ways to
move towards defining the metrics of
a "green data center."
Green data center strategies
can meet IT availability and performance
requirements while impacting the "bottom
line" through the reduction of power/energy
needs and a more effective use of existing
IT equipment. The result is a more profitable
data center that achieves or exceeds
many if not all corporate environmental
sustainability objectives.
About Alan Mamane:
Alan Mamane is CEO and Founder of
42U,
a 14 year old energy efficiency consulting
company with global offices focused
on providing Facilities and Data Center
Managers with objective and trusted
independent information on
Data Center Power and
Data Center Cooling best practices
along with
KVM over IP and
Remote Power lights out management
to help them reduce their organization's
power consumption. Our
Data Center Energy Efficiency website
has helped millions of IT professionals
globally who search for best practices
and technologies to help them make their
computer environment more efficient.
About 42U
42U believes businesses benefit
financially by continually improving
their management of energy resources,
and the environment benefits from reduced
levels of related pollution. We are
proud to offer services and products
that may assist businesses who have
committed to the goals of ENERGY STAR.
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42U is an
ENERGY STAR Partner
ENERGY STAR qualified products
and practices help you save
money and reduce greenhouse
gas emissions by meeting strict
energy efficiency guidelines
set by the U.S. EPA and U.S.
DOE. The ENERGY STAR label also
designates superior energy performance
in homes and buildings.
Additional information
is available at the ENERGY STAR
website, www.energystar.gov
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Copyright 2008 Alan
Mamane. All rights reserved.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative
Works 3.0 Unported License.
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