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Microsoft Wants To Nix Data Center Backup Generators
1sockchuck writes "Data centers operators often tout their diesel backup generators as a symbol of their reliability. So why does Microsoft want to get rid of them? Microsoft says diesel generators are 'inefficient and costly' and is looking at alternatives to supply emergency backup power for its server farms, including fuel cells powered by natural gas. One possible option is the 'Bloom box,' which both Apple and eBay are using in their data centers (albeit with biogas as the primary fuel). Bloom is positioning its fuel cells as a way to forego expensive UPS units and generators, using the Bloom box for primary power and the utility grid for backup. It's a pitch that benefits from the current low price of natural gas." (Microsoft would like to stop using so much water, too.)
Amazing! we replaced our backup generators....with backup generators! Good thing we don't need those heavily invested generators anymore, we'll just buy more!
Now we don't need generators! /facepalm
That said, in all seriousness. If they replace backup generators with some alternate technology. I hope that they actually make sure it is reliable first. And that it stays reliable over time. (eg, three years later, you suddenly need it, does it still work?)
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
It ain't what they call you. It's what you answer to. http://mylyceum.us/
It seems logical to me, to have a natural gas backup turbine do double duty during high electricity consumption times.
Not here in the uk, and of course this price is very volatile anyway , more so then diesel with massive swings year on year.
wait.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
There is nothing wrong with diesel emergency backup generators (keyword EMERGENCY BACKUP). They are easy to run and maintain, assuming you have a basic understanding of engines. Check the oil and fire them up every 6 months or so, plus a mechanic taking a good look once a year or so. They are large, so it easy for someone to get in there and replace parts. You can fuel them by getting diesel from any gas station in the area. And if they break, there are thousands of mechanics which can fix them, local to pretty much anywhere that has civilization.
The "Bloom Box", on the other hand, is a specialized piece of equipment which only a few people know how it actually works. It uses a niche fuel source, not going to find that at a Shell station down the road.
sudo make me a sandwich
Bloom boxes are the soylent green of the Data Center industry. Wait til we find out how they *really* work.
More useful for other applications but an alternative power source that I've been following for some time is http://www.bluegen.info/ The concept is great for those in colder climates and I have never been able to understand why it hasn't taken off.
Microsoft says diesel generators are 'inefficient and costly'
The real prob, assuming you live outside 3rd world areas, is the local electric power co is more reliable than transfer switches and generators.
Its legendary in the telco biz how many outages faulty transfer switches and generator testing "accidents" cause.
Local power causes many fewer outages, but the PR of "we're down because of no generator" "competitors have gens" means we have to lower our quality of service by installing generators, which is too bad. The customers are so dumb they'd rather have 10 hours of outage per decade due to x-fer switch issues than 1 hour of outage per decade due to power failures.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
If one has a true distributed/cloud computing infrastructure, if you can survive from a datacenter or two going down why even have backup power? Why not invest that money in other things? Maybe im missing somthing here.
I hear there's this great new energy device called an E-Cat that's just coming into the market!
It was covered by Slashdot when the first demo plant went online.
It's now a year later, and the company is willing to sell units to anyone. Check here for details! Or this great WIkipedia article.
It sounds like a perfect high-tech replacement for old-style backup generators!
(For those of you who can only read English the way a compiler reads code: yes, I'm being sarcastic.)
It looks like they're simply looking for a more efficient alternative to diesel, not remove backup power from the chain entirely. Quit trolling for click-throughs; this is /., not InfoWorld.
What would this guy have done without one?
Hook Steve up to a wind-powered generator. Voila! No need for a backup generator.
If they replace backup generators with some alternate technology. I hope that they actually make sure it is reliable first. And that it stays reliable over time. (eg, three years later, you suddenly need it, does it still work?)
If the alternate energy source is renewable and reliable it should probably be the main source of energy rather than just for back-up purposes.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
When Microsoft finishes digging its' grave with W8, they'll use less backup power *and* water.
If they replace backup generators with some alternate technology. I hope that they actually make sure it is reliable first. And that it stays reliable over time. (eg, three years later, you suddenly need it, does it still work?)
They're not just replacing it though; they're flipping it. The primary power source will be on-site generation, with the backup being the grid. So reliability becomes less of a concern -- the onsite system is running constantly, meaning any faults will be found pretty quickly and it'll drop to grid power while you troubleshoot those. Meanwhile, the only maintenance they need to worry about on the backup system is a couple wires and the actual switching system. It's not like a diesel backup system where you have to run it every couple months anyway.
This seems like it would be a lot more reliable than the usual system, even if their new natural gas generators aren't. Because you'll never have a situation where you go to switch to backup only to discover some part on the generator broke while it was sitting idle.
Of course, they're going to end up spending more money on manpower to keep their local generation systems maintained, since they'll be running all the time -- which makes me wonder if that's what would really be driving any improved reliability.
We have natural gas generators for our data center. I thought that natural gas was the norm for these things?
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
You heard it here.
bjd
Buzzwords aside, a distributed server farm ("cloud") has redundant power supplies (in addition to redundant everything else) by simple virtue of geographic distance and replication. Maybe it is not cost-effective to have "uninterruptible" power at any single location. Just let this site go offline for a while as the others pick up the slack. You already need this redundancy to handle other failure modes anyways.
That'll be really great until the grid goes down and takes the natural gas pumping stations down with it.
FromTFA:"...2.46 million gallons of wastewater produced annually by the typical data center, which must be pumped offsite and treated..."
Why does cooling water used in a typical data center need to be treated?
Isn't it pretty much just flowing through stacks and carrying heat out to radiators or cooling towers? What in the process of gaining/releasing heat requires subsequent treatment?
Or is it just that the cooling systems haven't even been designed with the care needed to ensure the water flowing through them isn't tainted with lead solder, etc.?
-Styopa
Yea; I'd hope they have some natural gas storage built into this system as well, but who knows. I mean, this is Microsoft we're talking about.... :)
To be fair, they've improved data storage reliability as a result of incidents like these. Now, when you provision a storage account under Azure, there's a check box (checked by default) that turns on "global backup". When on, any data written to storage is fanned out across two geographically diverse data centers.
Say what you will about their technical mistakes, Microsoft does learn from them. As far as their decisions when it comes to product development and marketing, though, they don't appear to have learned a damn thing in the last decade.
John
Around here, there are HUGE liquid storage natural gas tanks that hold weeks to months of fuel. The distribution system just works based on the naturally high pressure of the gas, no pumping involved. Natural gas still works, even with weeks of power outages.
Gas stoves are nice for winter power outages.
If Microsoft wants to do something useful in this area, they should build an OS that can respond to a "power is failing" signal and reliably get to a safe state in a few hundred milliseconds. Then put enough capacitance in the power supply to provide a second or two of shutdown warning. With that, transient power failures are no problem, nor are short delays during transfer from line power to backup power.
Tandem had that 20 years ago.
I think that would be very unlikely.
I grew up in a rural-ish bit of England, and there were occasional power cuts -- perhaps every 6 months or so. The natural gas never failed -- the electronic ignition for the gas cooker wouldn't work, but it could easily be lit with a match. A bland roast dinner can still be made in the dark.
Flywheels are very efficient and require no maintenance. They operate much as a battery does.
âoeIn theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not." â Albert Einstein
Around here, there are HUGE liquid storage natural gas tanks that hold weeks to months of fuel. The distribution system just works based on the naturally high pressure of the gas, no pumping involved. Natural gas still works, even with weeks of power outages.
Yes and no. Natural gas lines rely on compressor stations to maintain the pressure. Some of these actually run on natural gas themselves but others are powered by alternate fuels. Also, depending on the condition of the line and weather during a power outage, a freeze-off due to accumulated water is a real possibility. But, your core point is correct - natural gas service is mostly dependable regardless of grid power and a good backup option.
Who only tests their generator "every couple months"? Ours exercise weekly and have quarterly PM's from Caterpillar (none of our datacenter generators are Cat's but they were already doing the work for the building generators and it's not like their diesel mechanics know any less than anyone elses).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
How many times does it have to be demonstrated that central utility generation is cheaper, more reliable and often less polluting than on site or self generation.
This whole article just seems like a Bloom Slashvertisement. 'Replace your expensive UPS and generators with OUR expensive generators'.
Kill yourself, that solves the problem.
Is Natural Gas more reliable than electricity? I'm assuming that they don't have huge CNG tanks to keep their generators running if there's a natural gas interruption.
I can believe that under normal circumstances the natural gas is an excellent backup to electricity since there are many failure modes that can affect one service but not the other, but in a disaster (hurricane, earthquake, flood, etc) or widespread power blackout, is natural gas going to be more reliable than electricity?
Using NG as the primary power source makes a lot of sense with current NG prices, and I'm sure they can design their systems so they can flip a switch and have utility power be primary power and NG be the backup, in case the economics go the other way.
If on-site power generation becomes commonplace and more large customers do it, is there a possibility that the power company will oversell their capacity enough that a large natural gas outage will also take down the power grid?
If there are are 5 datacenters in a particular area and each has the capacity to draw 20MW of power, but usually generate their power via natural gas, can each facility be assured that the power grid in that area can supply 100MW of power to keep all 5 datacenters running when a major natural gas pipeline shuts down natural gas service in the area? Or will the power company only provide 80MW of transmission lines in the belief that not all of the datacenters will failover to electricity at the same time?
My guess is the 'TCO' is less ?
Maybe the local generation is slightly more expensive than the grid. So you run that most of the time, but you don't to pay for a backup system which is sitting idle. The grid is the backup system.
New things are always on the horizon
And Bloom box would like you to believe it too.
That doesn't necessarily make it true.
Bio-gas requires a source (a trash dump effectively) and a lot of processing (drying, etc.) to be burnable in a Bloom Box. There's little evidence companies have gone through this trouble, it's more likely they are just pumping natural gas in.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Of course it's reliable - it's time tested technology as used on Apollo 13 :)
On a more serious note, generators require a lot of care and feeding while an elaborate battery requires less once you consider a long timeframe. If you don't have an experienced diesel plant mechanic onsite there's not much point having diesel generators
So eBay bought five boxes ($3.5M-$M) and in 9 months saved $100K.
Perhaps if those boxes keep running without needing any maintenance or fuel
and nobody invents anything newer or more efficient in the meanwhile,
in 90 months they'll save $1M, and in 360 months they'll make up their
original investment.
Can't wait 30 years to find out.
E
Since the gas is pressurized, the pipeline itself stabilizes for interruptions. Pressure drops slowly, but as long as you have a compressor at your end you can ride through.
The big impact to reliability is actually the requirement for automatic shut-off valves after the PG&E pipeline explosion in San Bruno. The pipelines are reliable today because they are almost impossible to isolate. Once that goes away you will either need a lot of local storage or a second source of fuel. The grid won't be any more reliable due to the amount of generation being done with natural gas.
Using diesel is a mess, but it seems like we are still a long time from being able to really use an alternative. Ironically, the EPA doesn't really help in this one either.
We believe in being creative and productive.
We nix suits and ties, and data center backup generators.
Ours are only tested annually.
Our hospital backup generators.
All two of them.
And one of them is guaranteed to fail every time.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Please tell me those are just for the datacenter and not the ones supplying power to life critical systems (please!). I mean if by test you mean run full load off them then I understand, but if you mean your generators are never exercised then it's no wonder at least one of them fails during your annual run.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
If instead of diesel fuel one wants to use natural gas or LPG there was a solution developed in the '70. Take an engine from a Fiat 127 (or first model Fiat Panda or Uno), bolt it to a three phase geneator, modify the engine to run on methane, LPG, or biogas, put a governor to make the engine to run at constant speed. You get a nice system that makes electricity and heat. Unfortunately newer petrol engines with electonic fuel emission control are a lot more difficult to adapt to be used as engines for generators, and are a lot more complex to service.
You know there's this magical thing made of long-chain lipids and cellulose fibres that makes light for you? No reason to cook in the dark.
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
The reason datacenters use diesel generators is fuel availability. In an extended outage, you can drive your pickup to the nearest station in operation, and fill up all the 55-gallon barrels you've got. Obviously calling for a fuel truck delivery is better, but diesel still gracefully degrades better than anything else.
The cheap-ass datacenters already use natural gas generators. They're cheap, clean, and require much less maintenance or other labor. But any idiot with a backhoe can knock out the gas lines, not to mention earthquakes, floods, etc. And when you've got no electricity or gas coming in, the datacenter shuts down hard.
The future might be "unleaded"... The only way to significantly improve on current combustion efficiency is to switch to fuel cells, and there's been great progress making fuel cells that run on gasoline, getting 60%+ efficiency doing so. I know I'd like one of those in my Nissan Leaf or Chevy Volt.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
That said, in all seriousness. If they replace backup generators with some alternate technology. I hope that they actually make sure it is reliable first. And that it stays reliable over time. (eg, three years later, you suddenly need it, does it still work?)
You are correct. It really does not matter what method you use to provide a backup power source for your data centre providing it is reliable. The problem all data centres have is normally high end management in that it is very difficult to get them to agree to regular testing of the power backup system since there is always a small possibility of a failure. It is essential that regular testing is carried out (say 3 to 6 months) otherwise when the main power grid goes down you could have a catastrophe on your hands. I have actually seen this happen a few times once (actually it happened twice in 3 months) where a digger cut the main power lines and another time when a substation transformer expoloded (very spectacular bang) and on all occasions the data centre went down.
It must be noted that the two times the mains was cut the batteries did provide power for 30 minutes so we were able to shut-down all machines gracefully. Surprisingly the generators did start immediately however the main circuit breaker from the generators failed. The once were the transformer blew was almost instantaneous since the main circuit breakers from the battery inverters actually failed as well. What was even more surprising outage tests were only carried out two weeks prior the substation transformer exploding
I think the saying "The best laid plans of mice and men" is appropriate here.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
Most data centres normally get their primary power from the main electrical grid. Backup is normally via batteries for almost instantaneous but short term (15 minutes to an hour) electrical supply while longer term (greater than 24 hours) electrical supply is normally done via diesel generators. Of course you do have some sites that can generate power via some sort of solar energy (eg. wind, photovoltaic, ..) or even natural gas. The problem you have from alternative resources is they have some drawbacks such as when the sun goes down photovoltaic cells are useless or when there is little or no wind then wind power is useless. Lets not go into other sorts of long term power generation since most are not viable 24x7.
:)
I am quite sure that some readers will point out that xxxx is viable. My answer is "maybe" but what about running costs? Example. Say you decide to use natural gas (assuming deliverable, cheap and plentiful) . In principle great however why duplicate what is already provided via the customer electrical grid and even if you did you would have to maintain your power generating system which is not cheap.
Why diesel generators to say xxxx? Well a diesel generator is a single reliable self contained power plant which means you only have to provide diesel fuel which is relatively cheap, can be delivered fairly quickly and has a higher ignition temperature than other forms of liquid or gaseous fuels. Of course you still would not use diesel generators as your primary source of power if your data centre has access to a customer power grid.
Note. By saying "xxxx" I would assume the reader can come up with an alternative power generation method although saying "Nuclear" I think LOL is more appropriate
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
If you don't have an experienced diesel plant mechanic onsite there's not much point having diesel generators
Why would you need an experienced diesel plant mechanic on-site? That is like saying you need a experienced motor mechanic sitting in every car that is on the road. Yes if a generator fails you would have to get a mechanic out to the site to do minor repairs but you don't have to have a diesel plant mechanic always on-site. Normally a data centre has two or more generators and if a generator goes out it is possible to get support generators delivered on-site within a few hours and integrating them into the electrical infrastructure is normally done by the technical site staff who can normally do this within a few minutes.
Actually if a large diesel plant has a catastrophic failure you would most likely have to ship it back to a heavy machine factory that has the capability of repairing the plant. In truth the same could be said for all electrical generating plants although a diesel plant is by far one of the most transportable.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
Fuel cells are more efficient, less polluting
That makes it bad for the American economy and interests. It will sacrifice jobs in the energy industry in the name of some liberal, unproven, uncientific, utopian, dreamy, touchy-feely ideals and global warming paranoia, proposing that investing less in American energy is necessary and even productive. People who buy diesel, gas, and oil products are Americans who believe in invesing in power for their productivity, enterprise, and lifestyle. It is simple math, the power-to-weight ratio of any combustion engine has simply never been beat.
In addition, stopping global warming will waste an opportunity for an entire future upcoming market and jobs in the unique products, research, and know-how using exclusive US technology for cleaning up an environment and keeping Americans and their clients supplied with clean, breathable air.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
I am quite sure that some readers will point out that xxxx is viable. My answer is "maybe" but what about running costs? Example. Say you decide to use natural gas (assuming deliverable, cheap and plentiful) . In principle great however why duplicate what is already provided via the customer electrical grid and even if you did you would have to maintain your power generating system which is not cheap.
I believe the rationale is that if they have to provide XX megawatts of natural gas generating power anyway, and if they can generate power via natural gas more cheaply than they can buy it from the grid, then why not use natural gas as primary power and the grid as secondary?
It's not likely that they are running traditional gensets, but something like the Bloom Box fuel cell (as mentioned in the summary) which has no (or few) moving or consumable parts and is cheaper to operate than a traditional genset.
Sigh. There are so many logical and factual problems with your post that I hardly know where to start. But I guess I won't bother, since I'm just a dreamy, touchy-feely idealist who's all paranoid about unscientific climate issues.
Ronald Reagan's main contribution to history seems to be the idea that you don't have to keep your facts straight, as long as you can do a good job of belittling those you disagree with.
Test is where we disconnect from the grid completely. And yes, those generators supply the entire facility with power, not just the datacenter (in fact, half the datacenter - tier 2 and lower applications - goes offline in order to ensure that tier 1 applications and clinical equipment remain powered).
The up side, is that of our two facilities only one has emergency and intensive care capability, and that generator passes every time.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
No it isn't.
When you need a generator, you need it NOW.
Even with frequent tests the things can fail just when you need them, and even with multiple systems there can be a common point that can screw up all systems. If you have something vital and nobody with a clue how to fix it you are asking for trouble.
mod funny. It's actually an oblique Futurama reference.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
I guess I actually sounded legit, I didn't make the irony evident enough. Say "America" and "USA" twenty times in any phrase and they will eat up whatever. Even if you tell them to waste their money, buy wasteful dirty things, and then buy the "solution" so they dont choke to death, buying bottled air forever, if they want to breathe properly.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/