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EPA Sends Data Center Power Study to Congress
BDPrime writes "We've all been hearing ad nauseum about power and cooling issues in the data center. Now the EPA has issued a final report to Congress detailing the problem and what might be done to fix it. Most likely what will happen is the EPA will add servers and data centers into its Energy Star program. If you don't feel like reading the entire 133-page report, the 14-page executive summary is a little easier to get through."
If you don't feel like reading the entire 133-page report, the 14-page executive summary is a little easier to get through.
Still too long. Can anyone reduce it to a single phrase or word? Thanks in advance
"... EPA!!! EPA!!!"
Having any Govt investigate efficiency is about as practical as the Madonna Commission On Chastity and Modesty. Computers are doing just fine at reducing their power consumption by many percent a year without the govt's "help".
Is that it? Seems like small potatoes to me.
The game.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
Move all the data centers to Minnesota or Canada and use them to heat people's houses.
Or better yet! DatacenterBurgerKing with CPU-broiled whoppers.
...whose servers are among the most power-efficient available, and even more so with Niagara 2.
Disclaimer: I own a tiny bit of Sun stock. (But I bought it because I believe in them, not vice versa!)
you had me at #!
I've long been dumbfounded by the way datacenters charge. They seemingly all charge a hell of a lot for physical space, and then almost completely ignore power requirements. This seems incredibly strange, since datacenter operating costs are pretty much tied directly to power consumption (monthly electricity fees, UPSes, electrical generators, cooling, etc.), and only incidentally to physical space.
Further, the cost to handle each extra watt is multiplied thanks to cooling, power back-up, wiring, etc., while increasing the physical size of the building, constructing more datacenters, etc. is just a flat (linear) cost, and mostly just a one-time expenditure at that.
This strange arrangement is what has led us here. It's not the natural evolution of technology to cram as much power consumption into as tiny a box as possible. It's an artificial need, created by the idiotic distribution of fees common to datacenters.
If a few large datacenters declared their fees as a small $$$ value for each unit of space, and additionally a few dollars, per watt of power consumption, you'd see the problem naturally fix itself, through normal economic forces. As soon as watts are the defining factor, companies won't pay more for a cramped 1U server rather than an (inexpensive) 2U or 3U server. You will also see companies happy to pay more for lower-powered server hardware, as having them directly bear the energy cost will make buying efficient servers a significant savings to them.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
No doubt our congress will act swiftly by moving daylight savings time to conserve power.
I just grabbed the executive summary version, and didn't see any mention of virtualization..
To me, this seems like one of the more important aspects of power efficiency. Individual server efficiency is important, but the gains from higher utilization could be even more significant. Adding another core to a hypervisor will always be more efficient than adding a new system (CPU, Power Supply, disks, video, etc..). The energy efficient hardware can also be applied to the hypervisor hosts. Build efficient servers, and use as few of them as practical.
Many data centers are already greatly decreasing their server count using virtualization. This should be part of any data center energy efficiency discussion.
With a lot of these massive datacenters residing in sunny california you tihnk they could offset a large chunk of their power needs with solar panels covering the roofs Like the FedEx hub in Oakland.
Get rid of the AC DC power supplys and replace them with bigger ones that power more then one system also this will work better with back up power.
Climate controlled. There's this element among building planners that think any outside air is bad(TM). That's why, even in small buildings where you don't have to worry about pressure differentials blowing windows out like you do in skyscrapers, you can't open a frick'n window in the Fall or Spring when the air smells wonderful and there's this perfect chill in the air the just stimulates the brain.
I'm drenched in sweat here in Hotlanta (it's 82F and 66% humidity and climbing to 94) and I really miss New England's Spring and Fall.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
OK, so I am a desktop/notebook guy. So this stuff may already exist for servers - but:
1) With multiple front-end servers behind NLB, make the NLB smart enough to put some servers to sleep when their processing isn't needed and wake-on-lan those servers (or the equivalent) when they are needed again?
2) Do servers do "speedstep" like desktops/notebooks where the processors and other components go to lower power level modes when they are not being fully utilized? If not, they should enable that.
I listened to this podcast just the other day. I found it very interesting to hear it from the network side of things.
e -green-data-center/
http://www.bladewatch.com/2007/07/25/cisco-and-th
For the most part, vendors are already working on reducing the power load. That's what the Low Voltage CPUs are all about. Spend more now to get a CPU that will use less power and run a little slower. Besides, do you really need a quad-core 3 GHz CPU for that file-server?
Gervase Markham from the Mozilla Foundation suggests using excess heat to power data center jacuzzis.
RichM
Data Center Knowledge
55 Mhz that's the law, exceed it and your looking at a speeding ticket.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
The concept of "free cooling" is gaining significant momentum in the data center space. I don't have any free or public information, but rest assured that leveraging winter air and other technique are being looked at very hard. Of course, this is not altruism or "green" thinking. It's our old friend financial greed. Reduction in capital expenditures for chiller plants and reduction in utility bills.
The only power source capable of generating 1.21 gigawatts of electricity is a bolt of lightning.
(Just reinforcing the reference. heh)
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
What you meant to say is "Hoover Dam at peak output produces 2 Gigawatts." What does make more sense is saying 48 million KWH per day or a bit over 17 billion KWH per year - assuming that there is enough water behind the dam to allow for continuous peak output, which is certainly not the case this year.He mentioned a perfectly fuel efficient method to cool servers!
Google for that and see what you get.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2000867,00.as p
Also reduces a major cost and greenness problem: all those little redundant ac/dc power supplies in those rackmount machines. Further, it allosw you to take the heat generated by the power conversion to another nearby location, reducing the CFM reqs for your cooling system.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
Get over it.
you had me at #!
You're speaking French. Then, you'll need 2.21.
We've all been hearing ad nauseum about power and cooling issues in the data center.
Whose data center? Mine? Yours? The EPA's?
Please don't butcher the English language like that. Throwing random articles around is a sign of laziness (similar in magnitude to "They said...").
Brought to you by SIAA (Society against the Indiscriminant Abuse of Articles)
-48VDC is standard for some kinds of telecom equipment, so there's plenty of server gear that will work in -48VDC data centers, and it's very efficient. Unfortunately, using this niche gear requires very large economies of scale, on the order of tens of millions of dollars to be cost-effective.
For mere mortals, blade servers are a better compromise. When you have 4 power supplies per 10 servers, instead of 20, you can afford to invest in more efficient equipment. It's still not as efficient as the rectifiers used in large telecom data centers, but it's a big improvement, and it takes 1000x to be cost-effective.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
also a dc set will give off less heat leading to less need for AC
Does this mean an Energy Star computer would be Sales Tax Free in Connecticut like appliances are?
I have found that stock switching power supplies as found in common computers are slightly more efficient when powered with 240 volts rather than 120 volts. Some more so and some less so. And virtually all of them can be changed over to 240 volts (having the correct 2-pole switching).
And by using 240 volts instead of 120 volts, you can run twice as many computers on the same power loss in the building wiring (same current, same size wire, same power loss due to heat, serving twice the load).
Direct DC fed power systems may or may not provide realistic savings. DC introduces new electrical safety challenges and costs (electrical arcs inside switches, circuit breakers, and fuses, cannot be cut off by AC's zero voltage crossing that DC does not have). This requires lower voltages for equivalent interruption safety. But if power supplies end up losing less power than the building wiring at the higher current, then DC may be the better choice.
We will need more in-depth study to determine if DC will save power or not at a given installation (it may at some and not at others). But for most installations, going from 120 volts up to 208 or 240 volts (depending in which is available) is as simple as rewiring the system (using 2-pole breakers ... requiring double size power panels) and verifying the computer power supplies are ready for the higher voltage.
208 volts is the likely line-to-line voltage in data centers powered by 3-phase (208Y/120) power in North America. Future data centers could be designed for a 416Y/240 volt power system which can also be used to power fluorescent lighting.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Yes, but how much less heat? DC rectifiers waste heat too. 3-phase power supplies on blade chassis are considerably more efficient than typical 1-phase pizza box power supplies. The blade system has an efficient entry cost an order of magnitude more than the pizza box, and 3 orders of magnitude less than the DC data center, but is closer to the DC data center in AC conversion efficiency. This makes it a very good compromise for the vast majority of enterprises that do not buy their data centers by the acre.
Don't get me wrong, I think DC is great, but until the market grows a lot more, it won't really be cost-efficient for the masses.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
"ad nauseam"
Yeah, it's an obscure word. Is it really such an imposition to ask "editors" to use a fucking dictionary? Took me 5 seconds to confirm my suspicion.
The last task I was on at work for the DOJ (as a contractor) produced 3 documents. The biggest was 450+ pages (lots of tables in appendices), the next one was about 280, and the smallest was about 50 pages I believe. 133 pages is nothing. We didn't have executive summaries either and our acronyms were placed at the end of the document as an appendix. I guess contractors and government employees have different document requirements. No surprise there.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Although to be fair, most of the work I've seen already done in this vein (years ago) did have Lawrence Berkeley National Labs involved, so I guess that includes the feds. Being personally biased towards stuff I've had a hand in, I think the self benchmarking guide at http://hightech.lbl.gov/documents/DATA_CENTERS/Sel f_benchmarking_guide-2.pdf and the design source book for datacenters at http://hightech.lbl.gov/documents/DATA_CENTERS/06_ DataCenters-PGE.pdf are far more interesting than a watered down Congress-critter report. I'm happy to see they mentioned free cooling, an amazing "duh" approach that is inexplicably ignored far too often (get an engineer to design it and the filtration and humidity control in the winter issues are trivial to handle, plus you end up with a net improvement in redundancy). But I'm annoyed at their ASHRAE boiler plate mention of hot aisle/cold aisle - a design approach that can be a Big Deal as far as saving energy goes as long as the fan control is done properly.
As a closing note, benchmarking has shown that typically about half the power going into a datacenter goes to keeping it cool. So listen to us mere mechanical engineers if you want to save a buck or million on the power bill...