-
Sun’s Colorado Consolidation Saves Millions
Sun Microsystems is using overhead spot cooling in its new Colorado data center.
How do you squeeze 165,000 square feet of data center infrastructure into a 700 square foot bag? By applying the full gamut of energy efficiency and consolidation technologies at your disposal.
That’s what Sun Microsystems (JAVA) says it has accomplished in a data center project that consolidated legacy facilities on its former StorageTek campus in Lousiville, Colo. into a cutting-edge site in Broomfield, Colo. In addition to a complete hardware refresh and server virtualization, the company used free cooling, closely-coupled in-rack and rack-top cooling, and flywheel UPS systems to save energy and space.
The payoff: Sun estimates that it will reduce its electricity bill by 1 million kWh a month, for a total annual savings of more than $1million a year. Sun also says that by building a smaller footprint, it saved the equivalent of $4 million in data center construction costs.
“The Broomfield data center showcases revolutionary data center design with the latest in modularity, scalability and flexibility to drive incredible efficiencies in cost, electricity and overall carbon savings,” said Dave Douglas, senior vice president of cloud computing and chief sustainability officer, Sun Microsystems. “As a company we’ve achieved our first 20 percent reduction in electricity usage since 2002, and the Broomfield data center is a great step forward in meeting our goal of another 20 percent reduction.”Sun needed to consolidate space after it sold the huge StorageTek site in Louisville to ConocoPhillips last year in a secretive deal (which prompted rumors that Google was the buyer).
As part of its design, Sun went with a slab instead of a raised floor, and then used in-row cooling and racktop units, including the first installation of Liebert’s advanced XD cooling system with dynamic cooling control, which can support power densities of up to 30kw per cabinet.
Sun used a pod design, but segmented the pods using clear vinyl curtains as dividers rather than walls, retaining a modular approach while allowing for reconfiguration down the road . It also used energy-efficient chillers, and eliminated batteries with a flywheel UPS system.
For more details, see Sun’s press release and case study (PDF).
About Rich Miller
Rich Miller is the founder and editor-in-chief of Data Center Knowledge, and has been reporting on the data center sector since 2000. He has tracked the growing impact of high-density computing on the power and cooling of data centers, and the resulting push for improved energy efficiency in these facilities.
700 sq ft or raised floor and Data Center Infrastructure? Clearly there could not have been 165,000 sq ft of raised floor. Let’s report Apples to Apples please!
Ed:
This is what Sun is claiming. The square footage on the total facilities involved is about a 4-to-1 compression (about 496K SF to 126K SF). Dealing only with the data center space, Sun reports that the operations housed in 165K SF of space at Louisville now reside in 700SF of space in Broomfield.
Is this apples to apples? Clearly not, and that’s partly the point – Sun replaced a crate of old moldy oranges with shiny new apples. That’s a process that has business value, and many companies today are dealing with similar scenarios.
If any of our readers from Sun are here this morning, feel free to provide additional info/perspective.
Sun Data Center: 165,000 sq. ft. into 700 sq. ft., Reduces Power Usage by 1 Million kWh per Month « HPC Info
Posted May 29th, 2009[...] Sun’s Colorado Consolidation Saves Millions describes how Sun used Liebert’s XD rack cooling, clear vinyl cold isle curtains and flywheels to increase the density of its data center while also reducing energy consumption. They reduced 165,000 square feet of data center space into 700 square feet while reducing their monthly power usage by one million kilowatt-hours. [...]
HPC Info » Sun Data Center: 165,000 sq. ft. into 700 sq. ft., Reduces Power Usage by 1 Million kWh per Month
Posted May 31st, 2009[...] Sun’s Colorado Consolidation Saves Millions describes how Sun used Liebert’s XD rack cooling, clear vinyl cold isle curtains and flywheels to increase the density of its data center while also reducing energy consumption. They reduced 165,000 square feet of data center space into 700 square feet while reducing their monthly power usage by one million kilowatt-hours. [...]
RESOURCE LINKS:
Building A Cloud-Savvy Model for TCO and ROI
How Storage is Shaping The Cloud Data Center
Bringing Colo to the Customer: Modular Gets Local
Microsoft’s $1 Billion Data Center
January 26th, 2009