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Data Center Designers In High Demand

Posted by timothy on from the blinky-blue-is-the-new-dull-amber dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "For years, data center designers have toiled in obscurity in the engine rooms of the digital economy, amid the racks of servers and storage devices that power everything from online videos to corporate e-mail systems but now people with the skills to design, build and run a data center that does not endanger the power grid are suddenly in demand. 'The data center energy problem is growing fast, and it has an economic importance that far outweighs the electricity use,' said Jonathan G. Koomey of Stanford University. 'So that explains why these data center people, who haven't gotten a lot of glory in their careers, are in the spotlight now.' The pace of the data center build-up is the result of the surging use of servers, which in the United States rose to 11.8 million in 2007, from 2.6 million a decade earlier. 'For years and years, the attitude was just buy it, install it and don't worry about it,' says Vernon Turner, an analyst for IDC. 'That led to all sorts of inefficiencies. Now, we're paying for that behavior.'" On a related note, an anonymous reader contributes this link to an interesting look at how a data center gets built.

3 of 140 comments (clear)

  1. Because the power grid has become very fragile by Kohath · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is only a problem because the power grid has become very fragile.

    Electricity generation hasn't grown ahead of demand due to government meddling, atom-ophobia, and environmentalist obstruction in the courts and on planning boards.

    The rolling blackouts will be coming soon. It'll start with small ones. Then everyone will buy battery backups that draw a lot of power to recharge once power is restored. This will cause the duration of the periodic blackouts to go from a few minutes to a few hours in about 2 years.

    Not long after that, we'll start building power generation capacity in the US again.

    1. Re:Because the power grid has become very fragile by bsDaemon · · Score: 4, Interesting

      On the other hand, it might be the final push that people need to start making their homes and businesses as energy efficient as possible, up to and including home solar and/or wind; use of more energy-efficient appliances, low-power-consumption electronics, etc.

      I would dare say that the future looks good for ARM and Via on that last account, at least.

  2. Re:Use geography to solve the cooling problems... by jsailor · · Score: 4, Interesting

    While it may appear that you don't have to work hard to cool the data centers, you will have to work hard to humidify them if you do not want your equipment to die. This is a non-trivial cost and is the reason the "free cooling" (taking in outside air to cool a data center) is often not free.
    One answer may be heat wheels, but they are fairly new and unproven in the data center space. Take a look at http://www.kyotocooling.com/