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Shortage of Electricity Drives Data Center Talks
Engineer-Poet writes "Per the San Jose Mercury News, competitors such as Google and Yahoo are meeting to discuss the issue of electricity in Silicon Valley. How much of the USA's 4038 billion kWh/year goes into data centers? Enough to make a difference. Data centers are moving out of California to spread the load and avoid a single-point-of-failure scenario. This is a serious matter; as Andrew Karsner (assistant secretary of energy efficiency and renewable energy for the Department of Energy) asked, 'What happens to national productivity when Google goes down for 72 hours?' I'm sure nobody wants to know." From the article: "Concern about electricity pricing and volatility has led Microsoft to talk with its network manufacturers about building more efficient servers. IBM and Hewlett-Packard -- which both build data centers -- want to improve efficiency at the facilities. AMD promotes changing the design of data centers to increase airflow to keep the supercomputers cool."
National Productivity would sky rocket if people couldnt waste time at work googling the latest fad, such as cats wearing tuxedos or paris hilton and lindsey lohan latest alliance.
So Google has more money than it has electricity. And it's HQ'd in some of the most expensive real estate in the country. And its servers are remote to practically every user in the world.
That sounds like a perfect reason for nearly all of Google's servers to live distributed around the US, and the globe. With local operators for physical access, and global remote admins for most normal operations.
The past year or so we've heard all kinds of wild rumors about "googled in a box": supercomputers in a shipping container for rapid deployment around the world. How about just a briefcase of money dropped on the local economies to build datacenters in-place, the old fashioned way, without the alien assault tech strategy?
Cheaper, more redundant, more energy efficient (at least not overloaded). Sufficiently distributed, they could use lower-density energy generation, like solar/wind/environmental.
Google should force manufacturers and designers to make all our power consumption more efficient, using their buying power to improve the tech. Then they should use that tech in the more economical, reliable, power efficient way. Share the wealth and power with the rest of us who are keeping them hot.
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Given the abundance of geothermal power in iceland (hence why aluminium ore is transported there for refinement) perhaps a few trucks of fibre need to be put in place - Reykjavik becoming the next big hub for data centers... Lots of power on tap, lots of cooling easily available (ie its bloody freezing there), and the good old days of meetings in hot tubs could come back too - though obviously thermal springs rather than hot tubs....
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Productivity will hardly be influenced at all. When Google goes down for 72 hours, people will switch back to AltaVista for a few days. If Google *regularly* goes down for 72 hours, people will switch back permanently. It's not like they Google are the *only* search engine around, they're just the most popular.
This question is entirely besides the point though. As it is in Google's interest to stay the most popular search engine, I'm sure they have got their backup mechanisms in place. I'm pretty sure they can guarantee that they *will not* go down for 72 hours *ever*.
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Google had the right idea when they located their datacenter in Oregon, in a colder climate so they don't need as much air con power, and right next to a big hydro power plant.
What's the point of locating your datacenter in an area with high ground prices, a history of electric power supply problems and a hot climate?
Acording to wikipedia, an avergage healthy human is able to produce 3W/kg for at least an hour, therefore 200 to 250W. With minimal pay + other expenses, let's say they cost you 10$ an hour and the system has 50% conversion effciency, that's 80 to 100$ for eack kW*h.
You really are desperate if you need to rely on that.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
You gotta remmeber that, when a blackout hits a huge swath of area, it also brings down the *client machines* in that area as well, so your backup centre doesn't necessairily have to handle your entire peak load.
Google only needs one of two redundant data centers (one in the East, one in the West, one Mid-Central) to basically ensure they can whether any power loss scenario. If they had 3 such separate centers (which I have no doubt they already have), the only way they're going to be totally off line is if the whole national grid goes down - in which case Google should be the least of your worries if you're a lawmaker.
Just make the system admin, and other people who's job is to wait till there is something to do pedal :) //Or call it the "company gym" and people will volunteer to do it for free. //You might even be able to get strangers to pay membership fees.
If you call it a gym you're going to have to put TVs everywhere. There goes your electricity.