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Roundup: The Google Data Center Summit

Google hosted its second Data Center Efficiency Summit in a cinema theater in the SihlCity section of Zurich, Switzerland. Here's a roundup of our coverage of the event.

Joe Kava - Google

Joe Kava, Google, described a network POP efficiency project that he oversaw at Google.

Google hosted its second Data Center Efficiency Summit in a cinema theater in the SihlCity section of Zurich, Switzerland, Discussion focused on improving efficiency across the board, although cooling and power were frequently stressed as areas in need of improvement. Presenters and panelists included members of the Google data center team, along with executives and engineers from eBay, Microsoft, UBS, PlusServer, The Green Grid, BCS and many other companies and organizations.

Here's a roundup of our coverage of the event:

  • Video: Inside Google’s Newest Data Center - Google is preparing to open its newest data center, a large facility in a former paper mill in Hamina, Finland. The facility uses the sea to replace the chiller in its cooling system, collecting cool water from an inlet pipe located about 7.5 meters beneath the surface of the Baltic Sea. In this video, Google Senior Director of Data Center Construction Joe Kava discusses the Hamina facility and the sea water cooling system.
  • Chiller-less Data Center is Google’s Top Performer - When Google built a data center without any chillers, it was entering uncharted territory. Google expected to reduce its energy bill without the risk of hot weather interrupting its chiller-less operations. How did it work out? The Belgium facility has become Google’s best performing data center on the leading energy efficiency metric, with a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) rating of 1.09 for the first quarter of 2011,
  • eBay Right-Sizing Infrastructure As Growth Surges - The infrastructure for eBay is enormous, and getting bigger by the moment. The giant Internet e-commerce company serves up 2 billion page views every day, requiring more than 75 billion daily requests to huge databases housing product information. That traffic is powered by high-density racks packed with up to to 96 servers and requiring 28 kilowatts of power
  • Most Users Resist Warmer Data Centers - Since 2008, the largest players in the data center industry have been advocating operating server rooms at warmer temperatures, saying the benefits of reduced spending on cooling can be substantial, and the practice hasn’t led to elevated hardware failures. But few enterprise data centers are following suit, according to Zahl Limbuwala, chairman of the Data Center Specialist Group at BCS, the leading IT industry group in the UK.
  • Google on Data Center Efficiency: ‘Just Do It - While Google is renowned for its data center efficiency, one of its networking centers needed work. “Almost everything about it was wrong,” said Urs Hoelzle, Senior Vice President of Operations at Google. The company invested $25,000 in efficiency improvements, and expects to see savings of $67,000 a year from the project.
  • Scenes from the Google Data Center Efficiency Summit - A photo feature capturing the events and atmosphere at the summit.
  • Case Studies, Networking Abound at Google Summit - Additional photos fot he key presentations and networking among attendees.
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