Slashdot Mirror
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."
When Google goes down, productivity probably goes up.
One thing that needs to be looked at with the congregation of data centers is why are they like that? Here in the North East, any kind of bandwidth will cost an arm and a leg compared to the North West area. I've recently been involved in pricing out Colocations for one of our webservers and a simple T1 costs 4-5 times in the N.E. that it costs in the N.W. I'm sure we'd see more evenly distributed data centers if costs we evenly distributed too. How about taking some of those new 40% efficiency solar panels and moving some data centers down to the S.W. for a start?
Locals and guest workers would be hired to pedal for one-hour shifts each, generating some portion of the needed power and giving a boost to the local economy. Don't think "galley" -- think "self-sustaining"!
If you'd like to use this idea, please contact me via my Slashdot account. Thanks.
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
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....
$_="Slashdotter";$syn="OTT";s;..;;;sub _{print shift||$_};s!ash!Perl !;s=$syn=ack=i;tr+LLEd+BLAH+;_"Just Another ";_
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?
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.
I think we all know where 'analists' are pulling their numbers from though...
Another interesting tidbit for comparison: a typical high-density rack puts out something in the neighborhood of 15KW of heat. An average home electric oven puts out about 7-8KW of heat. So each high-density rack is like having two ovens going full blast, 24x7.
The 500 pound gorilla in the corner is that in a typical Silicon Valley datacenter only 50-60% of the power goes to the computers while the other half goes to the support equipment. It does not have to be this way, and things are changing. I have not yet walked into a datacenter that could not cut its total power usage by at least 25% (albeit, in some cases the design damage is done and the simple payback required to make it work would stretch to 4-5 years)(I'm looking at you, datacenters with dozens of 20-30 ton air-cooled compressors on the roof).
On the gross kWh/yr side, the vast majority of datacenters are unable to use outside air directly for cooling. A 24 hour a day load and they can't 'open the windows' to cool it at night (with appropriate filtration and redundant humidity control lockouts of course)? Come on people! It would even improve reliability (even 70F outdoor air could hold a well configured hot aisle/cold aisle datacenter). But that doesn't help trimming peak load, to do that you have to get the airflow right.
Efficiency in datacenters starts with just a basic understanding of airflow. You want it very hot behind the racks; you want that hot air to go directly back to your cooling unit not get recirc'd to a rack intake. And you have to have airflow controlled based on the cold aisle temperature to harvest energy savings (fan energy wastage is ridiculous in these things)(oh, and watch out for those server fans that ramp up if you push the cold aisle temp too high - not efficient to provoke a rack of those guys to start screaming).
You have to know hot aisle / cold aisle to properly design and operate an efficient datacenter, even if that exact configuration is not applicable. Period.
Of course, its not "that simple," but to the design engineers it certainly should be pretty straightforward work. The information is out there and more is in the pipeline. A good start on the basics of efficient datacenters is available here (full disclosure, I was associated with producing that report, so I am not impartial)(but don't blame me for the blurry graphics - I did not create the pdf!).
And for god's sake people, quit keeping these places at 55-60F - I'm freezing my butt off and you're making a mockery of your own 'tight humidity control' (70-90% RH at the server intakes, but a good 45% +/- 2% at the air handler return).