Documenting an Economization Project

I got a chuckle at an event earlier this year when Sun Microsystems’ Subodh Bapat referred to air-side economization as “a fancy term for opening the windows in the data center.” It may be a basic concept, but some data center operators are finding significant gains by putting it into practice.

One example is the Red Rocks Data Center in Morrison, Colorado, which recently installed an air economizer system to cool a colocation room with 24 cabinets. The company launched a blog to document the project, complete with a photo gallery and a status page that provides a real-time indicator of whether the economizer system is in use, along with data about the company’s energy savings. Early data suggest Red Rocks can save more than 75 percent on energy costs when the economizer is in use.   

Climate is a key factor in whether air-side economization will be effective, since it can only be used at temperatures of 72 degrees or lower. The team at Red Rocks Data Center believes they’ll get plenty of use out of its economizer system, and is giving it a prominent role in its green marketing story.

Harvard’s LEED Data Center

60 Oxford Street, the LEED-certified building at Harvard that includes a 9,000 square foot data center (Photo, Harvard University)

We’ve written about the many data centers now seeking certification as “green” facilities under the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program from the U.S. Green Buildings Council. But it turns out we missed one: Harvard University received LEED approval for its data center building at 60 Oxford Street in Cambridge, Mass.  The 93,923 square foot, $34 million building was completed in June 2004 and received LEED status in early 2007.

60 Oxford Street includes a 9,000 square foot data center that houses the Network Operations Center and the Server Operations Center, along with computer labs and offices for the University’s information services staff.  EYP was among the contractors working on the project, which is fully documented on Harvard web site. 

We have updated our list of LEED-certified data centers to include 60 Oxford Street, as well as the new Citigroup data center in Georgetown, Texas, which will announce its LEED approval in an event today.

LEED Gold Rating for Citigroup Austin Data Center

Citigroup (C) will hold open its $450 million data center campus in Georgetown, Texas on Thursday, and will be celebrating a milestone: the facility has become the latest data center to earn Gold certification under the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program administered by the U.S. Green Buildings Council.

In 2007 Digital Realty Trust (DLR) became the first provider to have a data center qualify for Gold LEED status for a build-to-suit facility within Digital Realty’s 350 East Cermak Road carrier hotel in Chicago. Earlier this year Advanced Data Centers in Sacramento became the first data center to earn pre-certification for LEED Platinum, the highest rating offered by the USGBC. There are only a small number of LEED certified data centers, but many developers are planning to seek certification for facilities.

The huge facility in Georgetown, a suburb of Austin, is expected to employ 50 people at an average annual salary of about $70,000. Construction on the 55-acre site began in early 2007. Citigroup is also seeking LEED Gold certification for a $232 million energy-efficient data center in Frankfurt, Germany.

Energy Standard for Networks in the Works

There are a growing number of energy efficiency initiatives targeting data center equipment. But what about the network? The Energy Consumption Rating (ECR) Initiative is an open standards-based project aimed at creating energy-efficiency metrics for network and telecom devices. The project was developed by Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, network gear vendor Juniper (JNPR) and Ixia (XXIA), which does network performance testing. Katie at GigaOm has details:

The Initiative is welcoming network industry vendors, service providers and other standards bodies to work with it to help institute benchmark metrics for how energy-efficient (or not) network hardware is. The group is working on repeatable measurements to report energy performance in units of “watts per gigabit per second,” a sort of miles per gallon for tech gear.

The initiative was announced by Ixia and Juniper. The inclusion of LBL (which is not yet listed as an ECR member) would broaden the effort beyond vendors. 

Oracle Breaks Ground on Utah Project

The planned Oracle Utah Compute Center in West Jordan, Utah

Oracle Corp. (ORCL) broke ground Friday on its new “compute center” in West Jordan, Utah, and hinted that local employment could exceed initial estimates. The $285 million facility will feature a 179,000 square foot data center, and is projected to employ 100 workers.

“We’re putting a lot of money in it and quite a few employees,” Oracle President Safra Catz said at the groundbreaking, which was covered by the Deseret News. “What I always find is that every once in a while we’ll go somewhere and I’ll think we’re going to add, you know, 100 employees and before I know it, we’ve got a thousand… So I expect I’ll be here when they’re talking about even more space.”

The Bottom Line Not Always Greener

Does the greener path always pay economic dividends in data center design? Harley-Davidson wanted to make its new 27,000 square foot data center as green as possible, and implemented many energy efficiency strategies, including virtualization, high-efficiency UPS systems and generators, a hot-air return plenum, and economizers. But Harley-Davidson found that several other green data center initiatives didn’t fare well in its cost/benefit analysis. Mark Fontecchio at SearchDataCenter.com has more:

The company decided against a rotary UPS and trying to earn Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification because of the cost and what it considered a lack of return on investment. “We looked at the rotary UPS. But it was expensive, and we were worried about the runtime,” Dereberry said. He added later that “LEED is very difficult to get and can be very expensive, so we didn’t go that route.”

That’s one company’s take. Obviously, many companies are choosing rotary UPS (flywheels) for their new data centers, and plenty are seeking LEED certification. Your mileage may vary, but be sure to test all assumptions about the cost impact of efficiency solutions. If you forget, the CFO will probably be happy to remind you.

SAP, Bull Team on ‘Bio Data Center’

Tired of hearing about “green” data centers? Does ”bio data center” work any better? That’s the term being used by European server vendor Bull, which said today that it will work with researchersfrom SAP AG to customize energy-efficient data center solutions using Bull hardware to run SAP’s business software.    

Bull’s R&D team and SAP Research will work together to ”optimize transaction/watt ratios” in large-scale SAP environments, focusing on best practices for virtualization architectures. The effort also hopes to deliver energy management-enabled SAP software.

“This R&D project embodies our vision of the ‘Bio Data Center’, a new-generation data center that brings critical advances in quality of service, energy consumption, and flexibility to customers,” said Michel Guillemet, Group R&D Director at Bull.

Microsoft To Use Solar Panels in New Data Center

Microsoft plans to install solar panels on the roof of its new data center in San Antonio, and will use photovoltaic power to supplement the 50 megawatts of capacity it has provisioned from local utility CPS Energy. The solar panels are just one example of the many steps Microsoft is taking to incorporate green technologies into its new data centers. While providing a visible illustration of the company’s commitment to environmentally-friendly technology, the solar panels may not make much of a dent in the energy bills for the $550 million San Antonio data center.

Solar energy hasn’t been widely used in data centers because of the large amounts of energy required to power the servers and cooling equipment in modern mission-critical facilities. It requires a very large installation of photovoltaic (PV) solar panels to produce even a fraction of the energy required by most data centers.

UPDATE: While Microsoft discussed plans to install solar panels at the San Antonio data center during Monday’s media event, the system won’t be operational in the near future. “While it is indeed sunny quite a bit of the time in San Antonio, the economics for solar are not yet a good fit for this facility,” said Mike Manos, general manager of Global Foundation Services for Microsoft. ”As solar technology advances, we anticipate that solar may become a more viable option within a few years. As a result, we have enabled our building to accept the technology and weight of solar panels when the technology matures.”  

The only data center currently powered entirely by PV solar power is AISO (Affordable Internet Services Online), which operates a 1,500 square foot facility in Romoland, California. AISO powers its data center with 120 solar panels that generate DC power, which is then run through an inverter and stored in batteries.

HSBC London Site Achieves BREEAM Rating

As is often the case with technology, the green data center realm has plenty of acronyms. PURE, DCiE and LEED (from the USGBC) have become familiar terms. Now there’s another one: BREEAM. That’s the environmental certification program in the United Kingdom, sponsored by the Building Research Establishment.

Digital Realty Trust (DLR) said Thursday that data center it is building near London for HSBC (HBC) has earned the first BREEAM “Excellent” rating, the highest available rating through BREEAM certification. This certification is the first in the UK data centre industry, and recognizes the energy-efficient design and construction of the new 107,000 square foot facility for HSBC, the global banking and financial services institution.

The HSBC site was acquired by Digital Realty Trust in April 2007 to support HSBC’s global computing infrastructure. Digital Realty partnered with CHt Data Solutions of the Laing O’Rourke Group to construct the facility.

Honda Data Center Gets LEED Silver Rating

The Honda data center in Longmont, Colorado.

Honda’s new North American Data Center in Longmont, Colorado has been awarded a Silver rating under the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standard from the U.S. Green Buildings Council. The Longmont data center is a Tier III facility, with a 18,700 square foot computer room will ultimately support 1.6 megawatts of equipment load.

The Honda data center uses a flat plate heat exchanger to provide free cooling when the outside temperature allows, reducing the use of chillers for approximately half the year. It alsosaves energy through the use of variable-speed air handling units that consume less energy than traditional Computer Room Air Conditioning (CRAC) units by allowing AC to intelligently ramp up and down to achieve the required under-floor air pressure.