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    1. Is the Rising Data Center Energy Crisis Over?

      Explore | CTO Edge (Aug 3 2011) Cloud Computing

      Is the Rising Data Center Energy Crisis Over? A report just released has indicated that the rise of energy usage in the data center from 2005 to 2010 was not as high as expected. The report, released Aug. 1, was written by Jonathan G. Koomey, Ph.D., consulting professor at Stanford University, and was commissioned and reported by The New York Times. If correct, it would seem that the dire predictions of data centers being the scourge of the earth, energy-wise, may not be as high as the often-cited original 2007 EPA report to Congress, which projected as much as a 100 percent increase over the 2006 to 2011 time period. The 24-page Koomey report was based on a series of prior reports by Professor Koomey (Koomey 2007a, 2007b, 2008b), as well as other well-documented sources. However, the underlying basis of the calculations seemed heavily focused on the number of “volume servers” shipped, as well higher-performance servers and ... (Read Full Article)

      Comment Mentions:   The New York Times   Uptime Institute   ASHRAE

    2. Top 10 Things Data Centers Forget About PUE

      Explore | CTO Edge (Apr 28 2011) Cloud Computing

      Top 10 Things Data Centers Forget About PUE In light of the reaction to Facebook’s recent announcement of its new Prineville, Ore., data center, with its 1.07 power usage effectiveness (PUE) claim, which seems hyper-efficient (or perhaps just hyper), as well as many other very aggressive PUE claims, I thought we should all take a deep breath and see what is sometimes “overlooked” in many data centers' PUE calculations: Power Distribution Losses: Downstream of the UPS, these losses are sometimes ignored; typically they can represent three to five percent for “copper” (I2R) losses, and sometimes up to five to seven percent if the PDUs contain a transformer. In fact, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) even found that a majority of the 120 original Energy Star for Data Centers program participants did not have the capability to measure the IT load “at the plug.” As a result, the EPA is willing to accept the UPS output as ... (Read Full Article)

      Comment Mentions:   The Green Grid   Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory   Facebook

    3. Facebook Open Compute and the PUE Trifecta

      Explore | CTO Edge (Apr 18 2011) Power and Cooling , Servers

      Facebook Open Compute and the PUE Trifecta In the race for the lowest power usage effectiveness (PUE) and other green IT bragging rights, Facebook seemed to pull ahead with a claimed 1.07 PUE. By launching its Open Compute Project website on April 7, Facebook has decided to disclose details about its newest Prineville, Ore., data center for all to see, review and possibly emulate. Unlike other high-profile PUE claims from giants such as Google and Yahoo, which provided some generalized information about what they did to improve efficiency in their designs, Facebook has shared a significant amount of detailed information. (Read Full Article)

      Comment Mentions:   Amazon.com   Google   Yahoo

    4. Harmonizing the PUE Metric

      Explore | CTO Edge (Mar 4 2011)

      Harmonizing the PUE Metric While singing in the green choir, apparently not everyone has been singing from the same page of the power usage efficiency (PUE) hymnal. A global task force was formed two years ago to deal with the apparent lack of harmony. The result, "Harmonizing Global Metrics for Data Center Energy Efficiency," is a 12-page document from The Green Grid that should have the U.S., the European Union and Japan presumably all singing together on key. (Read Full Article)

      Comment Mentions:   The Green Grid   Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory   Data Center Efficiency

    5. Welcome to the Data Center Container Hotel

      Explore | CTO Edge (Jan 26 2011) Container , Power and Cooling , Cloud Computing

      Welcome to the Data Center Container Hotel IBM recently announced that it is delivering a containerized data center (IBM refers to their unit as a Portable Modular Data Center “PMDC”) to a new colocation site in Santa Clara, Calif., that is designed specifically for containerized data centers. The site, know as 1101 Space Park, was developed, built and operated by Pelio & Associates and Digital Realty Trust. Although Pelio and DRT have built and operated co-lo sites in California for the last 10 years, this is their first design for supporting containers rather than traditional raised floors and racks. (Read Full Article)

      Comment Mentions:   Google   IBM   Dell

    6. IBM and Schneider: A Green Tag Team

      Explore | CTO Edge (Oct 13 2010)

      IBM and Schneider: A Green Tag Team So how many major corporations does it take to improve the efficiency of the data center? Now guess how many more it takes to extend that efficiency to a building or an entire campus? The answer, at least according to IBM and Schneider Electric, is just two. In several independent, but related announcements issued at the recent West Coast Green conference, these two giants seemed to have found that working together to improve energy efficiency in the data center can also work for an entire building. (Read Full Article)

      Comment Mentions:   IBM

    7. Beating the PUE Acronym to Death

      Explore | CTO Edge (Sep 15 2010) Servers

      Beating the PUE Acronym to Death By now everyone involved in the data center has heard about the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) metric that was originated and defined by The Green Grid. In an interesting marketing ploy, Trendpoint has come up with the concept of “Micro PUE.” They claim that “Micro PUE” represents the performance of individual CRAC systems by measuring the input energy vs. the actual cooling delivered in BTUs. Not coincidentally, they manufacture a monitoring unit (Envirocube) that they say will measure the actual cooling delivered by a data center CRAC. They go even further: If one accepts their premise of the existence of “Micro PUE,” then they now can introduce by inference the term “Macro PUE,” which they postulate is really a better term than just PUE, since they hypothesize that PUE really reflects the data center’s cooling efficiency (“This paper has shown that PUE is essentially a measurement of the cooling ... (Read Full Article)

      Comment Mentions:   The Green Grid   ASHRAE   Crac

    8. The Greening of the Data Center

      Explore | CTO Edge (May 20 2010) Servers

      The Greening of the Data Center In walking through the main exhibit hall of the Uptime 2010 Symposium in New York City this week, I felt as if it was a case of, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, whose data center is the greenest of them all?” Clearly it was taken for granted that if you were at Uptime, you already knew that downtime was bad. The event was well attended and busy, the sessions were very full, many of the “green” sessions were standing-room-only, and the exhibit hall was packed with vendors. It would seem that despite -- or perhaps because of -- the current economic situation, everyone was finally aware that data centers need to be more efficient. (Read Full Article)

      Comment Mentions:   Hewlett Packard   ASHRAE   Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

    9. How Green Is Your Storage?

      Explore | CTO Edge (Apr 22 2010) Cloud Computing , Storage

      How Green Is Your Storage? Many believe that waste in the data center is a sin -- well, at least a financial sin. CTOs are often taking a close look at their data centers to prevent waste and to maximize utilization, while reducing energy costs. Nevertheless, there seems to be one area that no one really wants to tackle, and that is disk storage. Most data center architects treat disk storage like closet space. In other words, you can never have enough. Further exacerbating the problem is that application administrators wind up carving storage pools into silos for their respective applications. The same can be said about network administrators and other IT managers in the data center. (Read Full Article)

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    10. Feng Shui and the Art of the Data Center

      Explore | CTO Edge (Jan 14 2010) Power and Cooling

      Feng Shui and the Art of the Data Center I am in the midst of designing a new data center for a client and have been trying to balance the requirements of costs, space limitations, maximum number of cabinets and the flexibility to meet the rising and ever-changing power density of the IT equipment loads. Of course, high energy efficiency is a given. In addition, the client is especially concerned about esthetics and how it will look when a visitor enters the room. My wife was reading a book on Feng Shui and suggested that I begin to incorporate it into my thinking. Not having enough time to become a Feng Shui master by the project’s deadline, I did some quick reading and found this definition: (Read Full Article)

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    11. Move Over Pue

      Explore | CTO Edge (Nov 17 2009) Power and Cooling

      Move Over Pue So maybe EUE is PUE after all, but different. On Nov. 12, the EPA released the finalized direction for its new Energy Star for Data Centers program. This is the followup to the Sept. 29 presentation, which I first summarized last month. As the EPA’s Energy Star for Data Centers program progresses toward finalization, it has decided to base the EUE metric (Energy Usage Efficiency) on The Green Grid’s PUE (Power Usage Efficiency) metric, but with a twist. Instead of measuring power in KW, it will be using “energy” as measured in BTUs or more specifically, millions of BTUs, used over a 12- (or 11-) month period. BTU, not KW -- confused? What, your data center metering (assuming that you are doing metering) only measures volts, amps, KVA and KW? You aren’t burning gas, oil or coal as the primary source of electricity? (Read Full Article)

      Comment Mentions:   ASHRAE   Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

    12. Valet Parking the Data Center Container: Part II

      Explore | CTO Edge (Nov 9 2009) Construction , Power and Cooling

      Valet Parking the Data Center Container: Part II In a recent post I postulated that a midsize company’s CTO had taken the plunge and committed to boldly move forward with a containerized data center strategy. Everything seemed to be going smoothly, and the new “data-center-in-a-box” arrived in only six weeks after it was ordered by our intrepid hero. The problems began when it came time “to just plug it in," since it was ordered complete with 1,000 new servers all pre-installed and presumably ready go. Our hypothetical CTO had indeed skipped all the tedious details (such as power and cooling requirements) and those usual endless meetings with architect and engineer construction committees normally associated with a new data center. Thus, he saved the 18 to 24 months of waiting for his new data center to be built, or so he thought. (Read Full Article)

      Comment Mentions:   Google   ASHRAE   IBM