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Faster processing speeds have made way for
advancements in science and medicine, as well for the elevated
popularity of consumer products such as iPods and BlackBerries. But
this speed comes with a price, ultimately affecting the bottom line of
companies and the environment.
Faster processing speeds have made way for
advancements in science and medicine, as well for the elevated
popularity of consumer products such as iPods and BlackBerries. But
this speed comes with a price, ultimately affecting the bottom line of
companies and the environment.
The doubling of processor speed approximately
every 18 months has also roughly doubled the rate of power consumption
and commensurate heat from computer processors as well. This has caused
a great deal of alarm among industry and government leaders over the
past couple of years as they grapple with ways to advance technology
without draining precious energy sources. Meanwhile, the lifetime
operating cost of powering inefficient servers and cooling them with
air conditioning has become a growing concern among data center
managers.
In the last year, several computer manufacturers
have introduced "green" servers. These eco-friendly servers, they say,
will save money, space and power, and reduce the overall
heating/cooling requirements. Green servers create less heat and
require less power, but have greater processing power than previous
generations of microprocessors.
Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW), for
instance, sells servers that use a low-power "CoolThreads"
microprocessor that uses less power than an average light bulb. Intel's (Nasdaq: INTC) green processors are expected to consume about 30 watts less than the company's older models. Sun, Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), IBM (NYSE: IBM), Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD), Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) and other companies have also created The Green Grid, an organization that promotes power efficiency.
Just last year, Congress approved legislation
urging Americans to "give high priority to energy efficiency as a
factor in determining the best value and performance for buying
computer servers."
This action couldn't have come at a better time,
as companies and even entire regions have begun to suffer from the
effects of energy-hungry computer servers.
"In the co-location or data center world, the
demands of increased electricity usage to fuel robust microprocessors
is creating lost heat that is difficult and expensive to cool," said
Jerry Morris, founder and general manager of NextLevel Internet,
a leading San Diego-based Internet access and co-location provider.
"For example, many co-location facilities in San Francisco, Los Angeles
and New York are quickly running out of power and, more importantly,
the environmental control systems to adequately deal with the heat
produced by the power-hungry servers."
Morris pointed out that for every 1x amp used by
a server, approximately 1x extra amp is required at a co-location
facility to cool the air, moderate the humidity, run the fans, power
the routers and light the building.
"This is why power costs are so high in closely
controlled co-location environments," he said. "It's also the reason
why you may no longer be able to fill your co-location space from top
to bottom with servers.
"It's no secret to me why Google is
semi-secretly building its new data center next to the Columbia River
-- unlimited power and cooling," Morris added.
In order to save energy, resources and the
environment without compromising their computer networks, Morris said
companies must first ask, "How much power do I need, and how much will
power actually cost?"
The following are several key questions
companies should ask their data center manager or co-location provider
about when creating or keeping a data center green.
- How much power do my servers consume?
- What is the wattage target per cabinet?
- What is the facility's desired target for humidity?
- What is the co-location provider's guarantee from a temperature perspective?
- Do I have hot aisle and cold aisle
designations? This means the opposing aisle's servers are blowing heat
into the same aisle and not blowing hot air into the cool intake aisles.
- Are the cooling units on the interior or on the exterior of the building?
- Is the local power company limiting the ability to expand, given the square footage of the co-location facility?
- Does the co-location facility have the ability to co-generate power?
- Does the facility have alternative or
preventative cooling measures? For example, some co-location centers
are introducing coolant-type liquids into the cabinets to cool the
servers. Additionally, last November, Hewlett-Packard unveiled its
Dynamic Smart Cooling for data centers, which has heat sensors on
cooling racks that send signals to a control panel that adjusts the air
conditioning output.
- Is the data center actively monitoring my power consumption and giving me timely reports?
The first step in deciding to go green in your
data center is making sure you can get an accurate and detailed monthly
electrical usage reading and bill. The usage reading is important
because it's difficult to do an accurate "bottom-up" accounting for
power consumption in a data center. Companies also need to know how
much money they are spending on electricity so they can have a baseline
for calculating the return on investment (ROI) for any changes or
adjustments when purchasing the more "capital intensive" green servers.
From an ROI perspective only, it may make sense
to purchase the higher heat-producing servers if you only have two to
three servers. As the company expands, however, you may want to look at
greener solutions despite the higher initial cost, because you would
otherwise have to expand your space and power requirement more quickly
than you might have anticipated, and that can be very expensive.
The second step in going green at the data
center is determining where the electricity is going. Air conditioners,
environmental control systems and power converters can gobble up nearly
half of an energy bill, but it's hard to really determine how much
electricity they consume without first knowing how much electricity
your servers are currently consuming.
Older facility equipment can also be a hidden
energy drainer. Companies should figure out what their oldest equipment
is and see if it needs to be updated.
Another factor to take into consideration when
going green in the data center is your company's growth. Some
businesses may need to increase their space, number of systems and
energy consumption, which all need to be considered when upgrading
servers and data centers.
"Today, the first thing companies should do is
consider switching to green-server solutions," Morris said. "Given the
right conditions, the ROI can be significant. We had a client go from
four server cabinets loaded with power and blowing out hot air to two
cabinets that appear to be blowing out cool air in comparison. It saved
them money and space, and our environment is better because of it."
Read the original article: http://www.sddt.com/News/article.cfm?SourceCode=20070215crg
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