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Generator Delays May Slow Data Center Projects
miller60 writes "The data center building boom is causing backlogs for new generator orders, with some companies reporting delivery delays of up to a year for new 2,000kw units, which are the current standard for mission-critical facilities. Generator availability is 'the No. 1 thing that will drive your construction schedules,' according to Equinix, which is building centers in three major markets. 'This will be a big issue for the next wave of data center builds,' says another industry executive. Used generators and smaller units tend to be more available than the 2 megawatt units, but companies targeting the enterprise sector may be wary of relaying on used units or smaller generators than those powering competing facilities."
I was having dinner with an IT guy from Skywest Airlines the other night and he told me in the last big power outage in St. George, Utah where they're based (and I live) their battery backups ran out quickly and there was a hardware problem between their generators and their IT department.
The end result is that all of their servers and network equipment went out for hours, and they had to cancel a whole lot of flights costing the company well over $1,000,000.
You can buy a lot of crappy gas generators at the Lowes across the street for $1M. I think I would have sent two guys there and two guys to the gas station to keep the essentials online.
There is a lot to be said for redundancy. Redundancy is very important. You can't talk about redundancy enough. Seriously, it's better to be twice as redundant than only half as redundant. And three times as redundant is even better than twice!
Lose Weight and Feel Great with Isagenix
I studied this topic for work this year and learned that the current data center rule of thumb is that for every watt that you spend powering a server, you must spend another watt on air conditioning...and it gets worse.
Now, with servers getting smaller (e.g., blades) and CPUs evolving to multi-core, heat and power usage density is increasing dramatically within the same floor space...and cooling it effectively ranges between difficult and nearly impossible...without ripping everything out and starting over...which few can afford to do. Effective cooling now requires knowledge of interior meteorology (to butcher a term). Data centers now end up with weather patterns...with cold zones, hot zones, wind, plague, pestilence...and it gets worse every day.
According to a study conducted last year by AFCOM (http://www.afcom.com ), a leading association for data center professionals, data center managers reported a 10% or more increase in power requirements during the previous year, with most expecting that number to continue to rise at a similar rate for the foreseeable future. As a result, 41% of those surveyed stated that the will be forced to upgrade their power and cooling systems within the next 36 months.
What to do? Well...first off, exploit the hardware that you have. Google VMware...and start using those spare cycles for more virtual platforms. Secondly, stop cramming everything into small spaces...learn to expand gracefully. Otherwise, that rule of thumb is going to fail...and we'll end up spending two-thirds of our power dollar on A/C...and still end up frying hardware. Lastly, how about demanding power usage metrics from vendors when specing out servers? Power supplies installed in many servers frequently run at 65% efficiency. The result is an enormous amount of excess power used that simply generates heat, which must then be removed. Unfortunately, the industry has not yet established benchmarks for performance-per-watt expended. Start demanding that info. You'll get blank stares and cryptic answers, but let them know that it matters, That electricity doesn't come out of the wall folks...it comes from burning coal, fossil fuels, hydro, and nuclear power. We either need to get over our fear of nuclear power and our distaste for dams...or start demanding better performance.
$0.02