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Data Center Managers Weary of Whittling Cooling Costs
Nerval's Lobster writes that a survey from the Uptime Institute "suggests something it calls 'green fatigue' is setting in when it comes to making data centers greener. 'Green fatigue' is exactly as it sounds: managers are getting tired of the increasingly difficult race to chop their PUE, or Power Usage Effectiveness. The PUE is a measure of a data center's efficiency. The lower the PUE, the better — and Microsoft and Google, with nearly limitless resources, have set the bar so high (or low, depending on your perspective) that it's making less-capitalized firms frustrated. Just a few years ago, the Uptime Institute estimated that the average PUE of a data center was around 2.4, which meant for every dollar of electricity to power a data center, $1.4 dollars were spent to cool it. That dropped to 1.8 recently, an improvement to be sure. But then you have companies such as Google and Microsoft building data centers next to rivers for cheap hydroelectric power in remote parts of the Pacific Northwest and reporting insanely low PUEs (below 1.1 in some cases). The Institute latest survey of data center operators shows only 50 percent of respondents in North America said they considered energy efficiency to be very important to their companies, down from 52 percent last year and 58 percent in 2011."
that always works
These are just publicity stunts. Computing is cheap in terms of energy, the energy used by datacenters barely registers in the total energy usage.
I like the way Facebook say they don't use HVAC... yet their entire BUILDING is a huge HVAC unit!
Efficiency of scale works nicely with HVAC, if you can afford to get the building made to your specs.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Dumb summary.
What does is matter how cheap the electricity is?
It is a ratio of two electricity costs.
Price of electricity has no effect on PUE.
Maybe climate has.
Cooling in arctic is cheaper than cooling in nevada desert.
Bram Stolk http://stolk.org/tlctc/
Why don't they just site their centers up north? Here in Duluth, most of the year the outside air is cooled for free by mother nature. Heck, they could sell their waste heat to nearby homes and businesses and get a negative PUE.
Don't need to be green to worry about this, it's $$, something ever company wants.
For instance, I suspect we waste more energy moving tap water in plastic bottles between cities.
Or to put it another way, since 2011 8% of data center operators have decided that they have other priorities than further improving what they perceive to be energy efficiency numbers that are as good as the cost of improving further can justify (while a much larger number still say it is a priority, but have no intention of improving it in the near future because they don't think the cost is justified by the potential savings).*
*None of this is intended to in anyway be in disagreement with any part of the point you made, just trying to phrase your point in another way (perhaps not well).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Consolidation might be good for industry in this case.
How irresponsible for them to cry that their competitors are destroying the environment less than they are.
They're only human. You have people yelling at you that you're destroying the planet enough times you tend to get jaded. Also, this is a little like claiming butchers are tired of sharpening their cleavers; if I'm a middle manager that last thing I want to hear from my stable of IT monkeys is "I'm tired of finding ways to cut costs." My response would be to point out where the door is. Last thing I need is a minion refusing to do something as important as cutting costs when possible.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Typical modern groupthink - if you dont match up to some artificial social standard you lose. Watch your own checkbook, don't chase some mythical metric that others self-report. You'll never win, they'll just keep moving the goalposts. Spend less money as you expand capacity, and you're doing a good job.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
But then you have companies such as Google and Microsoft building data centers next to rivers for cheap hydroelectric power in remote parts of the Pacific Northwest and reporting insanely low PUEs (below 1.1 in some cases).
Power Usage Efficiency has nothing to do with the source of the power you're using.
It's not even a measure of efficiency of equipment.
Please help metamoderate.
I read that google did some experiments a while back and found that running the datacenter hotter saved more $$$ in cooling than the cost of the increased failure rate of hardware. That's fine for some computing workloads, but what are the obstacles to making computers that can run with an acceptable failure rate in an ambient temperature of (say) 50C (~120F)? I assume there are some major obstacles, i'm just curious as to what they are.
Even if you could run the solid state hardware at 50C and the disks in a separate storage room at 22C, that would still be a win right?
For instance, I suspect we waste more energy moving tap water in plastic bottles between cities.
"Well, people get shot all the time, so what's the big deal if I shoot someone?"
Doesn't work that way, does it? It sounds a bit like you're arguing a nirvana fallacy, namely that because this trend of saving energy in datacenters doesn't save energy everywhere, it's useless.
Please help metamoderate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal
Riiiiight.
They are not "only humans"! They are *Americans*! And *that* explains their fucked-up mindset of instead of *stopping destroying the planet*, getting jaded. Fuck that! Go fuck yourselves! Nobody cares how "jaded" you are! Reality check: YOU. ARE. ACTIVELY. MURDERING. AN. ENTIRE. PLANET! NOBODY cares if you like being yelled at and stopped at doing that! It's our existence on the line! And in that case, you can bet your ass that we'll end yours before you end ours! (And in the end, nature always wins. We're just not interested in going extinct *with* you.)
How fuckin' hard is that for you to get in your thick retarded ignorant delusional American skulls, you fucktards??
I realize talking shit about America is just so cool on /. Especially by anonymous little bitches like you. But why don't you take that electricity powered computer that is filled with toxic crap and use if for something useful if you are so concerned with "murdering an entire planet" instead of posting crap on /.? If you can't do that, then I would suggest you think of the environment and shove it up your ass and go live in a fucking cave.
It seems to me that most of the people I see bitching about the USA(who are not from there) tend to be from a country that was formerly a major power compared to the rest of the world. And after you and your countrymen got finished fucking up some large region you collapsed in on yourselves. Leaving someone else to un-fuck what you did. For the last half a century or so that has been the US. While we have done some colossally stupid things, I'm not sure there has been a more benevolent leading nation. Yes you can bitch about atomic bombs and wars all you want. But considering the capacity for destruction the US has, it has remained more restrained than most if not all before it. What do you think would happen if North Korea or Iran had the arsenal the US does? What if the Germans or Italians had in it in the 30's or 40's? Or the Ottoman empire?
I'm so happy that you come from such a peace loving enlightened country. And that you are such an enlightened individual. Oh wait, you're not. You just threatened my country with genocide. What have you and your countrymen done for the world? I'd seriously like to know what country you even come from. For all the stupid shit we americans do, have you ever looked at the amount of financial aid we give to countries that have absolutely no strategic value? Or the amount of food we give away, or the number of paid and volunteer americans who go to help other countries? As much as I hate war and violent conflict, I'm also not stupid enough to sit idol if my home is attacked. Fortunately with the current arsenal if you feel the need to "end our existence" I'm sure as a last resort we'll be plenty happy to turn your home into a shiny new glass parking lot.
Trollish troll, I rebuke thee with a Citationing of Statisticals:
Country / CO2 (ktonnes) / % of world emissions / source China (ex.Macau, Hong Kong) 7,031,916 23.5% UN Estimate[6] United States 5,461,014 18.27% UN Estimate[6]
Except that the population of China is 1.3 billion, and the population of the US is 315 million, so the statistics you supplied basically state that the US is polluting over 4 times as much per person than China is.
Good argument you have there.
Why is there so much China bashing in this thread? The GP didn't mention them at all, and as I mentioned in an earlier comment, they aren't relevant to the conversation.
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
True. Those things are almost exact opposites. You will never waste money by cutting costs, if you are accounting correctly.
Everyone does realize this was one of those "On a scale of 1 to 6, 6 being extremely important" type surveys, right? It was also among other categories (ranked for importance) like:
Up-front cost
Long-term cost / TCO
Speed of delivery
Reliability
Electrical/energy efficiency
Minimizing under-utilized assets / operating near full capacity
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
There's talk of removing a few Dams and with them the cheap power.
The Washington state Indians have a treaty to fish salmon they way they used to (with nets)
that they then sale to make a living. The salmon are in decline which is blamed in part to the Dams. All of
the Dams have fish ladders that help the Salmon migrate but they are asking for the lower (last) four Snake river Dams to be removed.
http://www.americanrivers.org/initiatives/dams/projects/snake-dam-removal-economics.html
It's much more than just the Indians, but they seem to be the loudest.
From the link: ...Replace the dams' energy in an affordable and carbon neutral manner..."
"Before the dams are removed, there must be a plan in place to:
I don't see how that can be accomplished unless wind power can be considered carbon neutral.
What have you and your countrymen done for the world? I'd seriously like to know what country you even come from. For all the stupid shit we americans do, have you ever looked at the amount of financial aid we give to countries that have absolutely no strategic value?
Yes, I have. It's embarrassingly low. A little less than what Greece gives, about half of what Germany gives, about 1/5th of what Sweden gives.
There's some stats over at http://www.statisticbrain.com/countries-that-give-the-most-in-foreign-aid-statistics/
The US has a lot of good points. Foreign aid isn't one of them, and neither is consumption patterns.
(Oh, and I live in the US and am originally from Norway, if that makes a difference.)
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
The total dollar amount given by the US is $28.67 billion That's more than number two and three (France and Germany) combined. If you factor in military and financial aid for 2011 was $49.5 billion. There's also an additional 10 to $30 billion donated by private non-government sources.
Neither does it care about international borders. The fact is that if people in China live their lives like people in the US then their pollution levels and energy spending would only be much, much higher. If you take countries instead of human beings as your base units this way, you would well come to the conclusion that the Chinese should starve because they eat more food than the Americans.
Wow, way to make yourself look like an asshole. Absolute numbers, not percentages. USA gives a shitload of money out for free and gets very little thanks in return. Foreign aid isn't a good point? LOL, let's cut it off for a year and see how many dozen wars start.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
"From this financial quarter onwards, as part of our corporate strategy of reducing paper usage, all corporate division teams will be required to provide monthly publication quality reports detailing how much paper they have purchased, used and have saved in the past month. Duplicate copies should be printed out and sent to their line managers, accounting, purchasing, IT and archives. Each team should also maintain their own local archive to provide the annual report at the end of the financial year."
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
The environment doesn't care about the ratio between population and GHG output. China is doing more harm than the US, full stop.
I have the perfect solution then: Split China into 100 separate countries, then none of them will be doing a significant amount of harm on its own.
If we then split USA and Australia and Canada into states, CO2 levels must surely drop, as no country single country emits anything worth worrying about. We're all saved!
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
So a Swedish citizen give approximatly six times the foreign aid a citizen in the US does?
Yeah, you're right. That is pretty embarrasing.
How the fuck can you replace a dam with wind power ? Hint: It fluctuates at a ration of easily 10x from windy to windless days here in Germany.
In a point installation, the same size as the dam? You can't. But averaging the wind power from a geographically larger area (the whole of Germany might just be large enough, but barely, I guess) ought to smooth thing up a little bit...that is, ONCE the distribution grids are smart enough to handle that. Right now, I don't think the infrastructure is ready for it. Also, you need a good predictive model to anticipate the changes. Again, something yet to be done. Oh, and there's this silly stuff called "national borders" to complicate the building of the smart grid. Oh, hell...
Ezekiel 23:20
Because mine is that it is useless to focus and put blame on the west when most emissions, and a greater share of emissions (per capita and aggregate) come from India and China.
a) Aggregate is not true today. One day it may be true, but the Western world today still emits more than India and China combined.
b) Per capita is really ridiculously far from being true.
If our purpose is simply to self-flagellate, then by all means be like the GP and persist in whining about selfish Americans (and Danes, too).
It is the selfish Americans and Danes that are the problem. That is also where a lot of the goods that cause the pollution in China and India end up. The Chinese and the Indians do not get to enjoy them, they just get the pollution. Shifting blame to those who have little and can do nothing about the problems is immoral at best.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?