Data center executives often battle to provide sufficient infrastructure resources for the equipment within the data center, while keeping costs low. Significant cost savings can be realized if only the demands on the infrastructure are better understood. For example, the use of integrated, real-time data with multi-dimensional perspectives helps to accurately depict the use of power and cooling resources and to allow for appropriate infrastructure right-sizing.

Emerson Network Power has installed this 7,800 square foot solar array on the roof of its new St. Louis data center.

Emerson’s new data center in St. Louis has earned Gold certification under the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program for energy-efficient buildings, the company said today. The 35,000-square-foot facility sports the state of Missouri’s largest solar power installation – a 7,800-square-foot rooftop array of more than 550 solar panels that can supply up to 100 kilowatts of power.

Emerson earned 40 out of a possible 51 points to receive LEED Gold certification.the U.S. Green Building Council. The company invested $50 million in the facility, which also features a high-voltage power distribution system using 240 volt power instead of 208 volt, uses Liebert XD high-density overhead cooling units,and follows Emerson’s Energy Logic guidelines throughout its design.

“The LEED Gold certification – a rare designation for a data center – is a significant validation of Emerson’s commitment to energy efficiency and environmental responsibility,” said Emerson Chairman, CEO and President David Farr. “The certification recognizes Emerson’s innovative approach and efficient technologies for managing one of the most vexing problems facing data center managers – energy consumption.”

The new data center is part of a broader consolidation in which the company will shift workloads from 100 sites into just four data centers.

More than 80 percent of the construction waste generated was diverted from landfills through recycling, and innovative design features enabled Emerson to save more than 2.5 miles of copper piping, minimizing the use of excess materials. St. Louis-based Fox Architects partnered with Emerson on the design of the data center and managed the company’s application for the LEED Gold designation.

The new division will be headquartered in Huntsville, Ala., and combines Avocent’s management systems division – which offers access and control of the physical aspects of network devices and servers – with Aperture’s capacity planning software. The new division will be led by President Stephen C. Hassell, who previously served as Emerson Vice President and Chief Information Officer (CIO) since 2004.

“It is appropriate that we are making this announcement in the first few business days of 2010, as we are ushering in a new era in data center management,” said Hassell. “The market is ripe for an infrastructure management solution capable of enhancing energy and operational efficiency while improving availability. I believe that our combined talents uniquely position us to deliver a one-of-a-kind solution to customers throughout the world.”

As CIO, Hassell was responsible for Emerson’s information technology strategy, including hardware, software, and services, as well as its telecommunications infrastructure. He has experience in data center design and management, as his team is in the midst of a global consolidation of Emerson’s more than 100 data centers worldwide and recently opened the company’s flagship data center in St. Louis.

Tom Waun, president of Aperture, will take on additional responsibility as president of global sales and marketing for the new division, and will join Avocent management team members who will retain their existing roles, Emerson said.

• Akamai Reports Third Quarter 2009 Results. Wednesday Akamai released financial results for the period ending September 30, 2009.  Revenue was up 5% year over year at $206.5 million and cash flow from operations up 13% year over year at $105.2 million. “Our results demonstrated our ability to leverage the Company’s unique cost structure and scale while improving performance and reliability for our enterprise-class customers,” said CEO Paul Sagan. During the third quarter the company repurchased approximately 2 million shares of common stock for $36.2 million at an average price of $18.41 per share.  Customers with recurring contracts at the end of the third quarter increased to a record 3,031; an 8% increase year over year.  It was also reported that Akamai is conducting an internal probe on insider trading after an unnamed executive was implicated in a massive insider trading scandal.  No Akamai official has yet been named or charged in the case.
• New Next Generation Data Wales facility. European data center specialist Next Generation Data announced the opening of a $326 million data center in Wales, U.K. Known as NGD Europe, it is the largest of its kind in the U.K. and one of the largest in Europe. The 700,000 square foot space was formerly a semiconductor plant and can be divided into multiple areas for individual clients. Several blue-chip companies have signed long-term contracts and Next Generation Data is offering a range of wholesale space-only contracts to large companies. NGD Europe has numerous security features, such as prison grade perimeter fencing, biometric recognition and ex-special forces security guards, bomb-proof glass and triple-skinned walls.

• Emerson Network Power releases Liebert Nform. Emerson released the latest version of Liebert infrastructure monitoring software Nform Wednesday, a comprehensive monitoring solution.  The software adds centralized management, data analysis and trend reporting to its real-time monitoring capabilities.  The new version also introduces a new management dashboard, enhanced trending capabilities and improved reporting. “A small problem in a data center can quickly escalate into a disaster. Knowing what is happening with power and cooling equipment can keep critical infrastructure systems at peak operating efficiency, which is vital to system reliability,” said Anand Ekbote, vice president of Liebert monitoring at Emerson.  Liebert Nform can increase the runtime of UPS systems by sending shutdown commands to non-critical equipment.
• Level 3 reports third quarter 2009 results. Level 3 released third quarter 2009 financial highlights Wednesday. Consolidated revenue was $916 million, consolidated EBITDA was $213 million, and they and they had a positive free cash flow of $9 million. “While we remain cautious, we saw positive signs in the business this quarter, as evidenced by the improvement this quarter in the rate of decline in Core Network Services revenue,” said CEO James Crowe. Analysts on the earnings call Wednesday focused many of their questions on Level 3’s sales force growth and the recent backhaul announcement for fiber to wireless towers.

Emerson is a leading vendor of power and cooling technologies for the data center. The acquisition of Avocent allows Emerson to continue to enhance its offerings for tracking and managing data center assets, following on last year’s purchase of Aperture, which makes capacity planning software. Emerson’s data center-related revenues were approximately $2.6 billion in fiscal 2008.

“Combining Avocent’s technologies, relationships and installed base with Emerson’s power and cooling presence allows us to offer a more compelling solution to our data center customers’ most pressing challenge – energy efficiency,” said David N. Farr, Emerson chairman, CEO and president. “It furthers our customers’ ability to better manage reliability, availability and lifecycle costs through a simple yet comprehensive view of the complete data center physical infrastructure.”

Avocent’s data center management solutions blend hardware, software and embedded technologies in a unified platform that simplifies monitoring, managing and problem solving in any size data center. The company is headquartered in Huntsville, Alabama, and had sales in 2008 of $657 million. Significantly, nearly 50 percent of Avocent’s 2008 revenues came from outside the United States.

“Augmenting Avocent’s ability to access and control the physical aspects of network devices and servers with information and knowledge of the broader power and cooling infrastructure forms a powerful combination missing today from the toolset available to data center managers,” said Mike Borman, Avocent’s CEO.

The purchase is expected to close around January 1, pending approvals from regulators and Avocent stockholders.

• Michigan plans Government cloud. Michigan CIO Ken Theis details the plans that the state has toward building a massive data center designed to provide cloud computing services to state agencies, cities, counties and schools across the state.  Government Technology magazine interviews Theis, who left General Motors 11 years ago to join state government. Theis states that it could potentially be a 80,000 to 100,000 square foot facility and break ground in October 2010.  The goal is to build a cloud to provide application hosting and managed services not only for the state government, but for the public-sector as well.  Data center consolidation efforts to date by Michigan have closed 35 of 38 facilities and repurposed nearly half of its existing IT equipment.  These efforts have saved more than $19 million and reclaimed 30,000 square feet of office space, according to the state.  Michigan will use American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds and other sources in an effort to make the new data center as green as possible.  Theis said ”No private-sector CIO wants to offshore, but right now there’s not really a good alternative. And they have the same problem now as government does: They don’t have any money.”
• Verari FOREST container selected by Qualcomm. Verari Systems announced Tuesday that Qualcomm has selected their second-generation FOREST container solution for their most recent data center expansion.  Qualcomm vice president of Information Technology Brian Baker said “When we evaluated the cost efficiencies of operating a container versus a traditional data center, it became a natural step for us to deploy one.”  Verari’s second-generation container recently won the Uptime Institute’s 2009 Green Enterprise IT award for Energy Efficient Products: Facilities.  The Verari FOREST container houses up to 2,880 servers or 26 Petabytes of storage and the company says it can be deployed at about 50% of the capital and operating expense of traditional brick-and-mortar data centers.

• Emerson Network Power unveils new rack power distribution units. Emerson Network power released three new rack power distribution (PDU) solutions Wednesday. The Liebert MPX adaptive rack PDU is scalable, modular and offers comprehensive remote management capabilities.  The hot-swappable power modules let IT staff make onsite configuration of rack power to suit equipment needs.  The MPX model was displayed (and in use) in the July open house for Emerson’s new St. Louis data center.  The MPX model also provides remote monitoring at the receptacle level as well as environmental monitoring. The second model, the Liebert MPH operates with the same network interface platform as the MPX and delivers real-time monitoring and control of connected loads.  The third new product is the Knurr DI-STRIP Rack PDU, and is available in both standard and HighPower models.  All three PDU products operate with the industry’s leading standard operating temperature; up to 131 degrees Fahrenheit.  Director of solutions marketing Matt Kightlinger said “The Liebert MPX allows users to reconfigure rack PDU input power, from 20 to 60 amps, and swap out, on the fly, receptacle modules as their IT equipment power requirements and plug types change over time.”  The products are available globally for order now and shipping will start in mid-September.
• IBM’s Green data center degree. IBM has collaborated with Metropolitan Community College (MCC) in Omaha, Nebraska to develop an Associate’s degree program focused on green data centers. IBM will provide hardware, software and online course materials to assist MCC in offering this program.  Mark Hanny, vice president of channels and alliances at IBM said ”Green has become essential to all IT organizations and this degree is designed to give students the skills they need to build more efficient data centers worldwide.”  MCC has ranked among the top 10 community colleges nationwide for 12 years in the number of IT graduates.  Courses offered in the program include networking security, applied data center management, building a secure environment, virtualization, remote access and monitoring, and 16 pieces of courseware around green technology.

Emerson Network Power has installed this 7,800 square foot solar array on the roof of its new St. Louis data center.

Perched atop Emerson’s new data center is a 100-kilowatt solar panel array, which is visible across the company’s corporate campus in St. Louis. That’s one of the reasons for its high-profile location. “You can see this array from around the campus,” said Keith Gislason, an IT strategic planner for Emerson who directed the project. “It’s about the message, too.”

Solar power has had difficulty gaining traction in the data center industry due to cost and capacity challenges. But Emerson took a forward-looking approach for its $50 million facility, and sought to craft a design that could demonstrate the potential for solar in the data center. Steve Hassell, Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Emerson, calls the St. Louis solar array ”an aspirational project.”

“The solar component was something we used almost as an experiment to learn the pros and cons,” said Hassell. “This is the way the world is going, and it’s important for us to have a real-world experience with this technology.”

550 Solar Panels
Emerson’s 7,800 square foot rooftop installation includes more than 550 solar panels, and is the largest solar array in the state of Missouri. Even so, at peak output it will supply about 16 percent of the data center’s power requirements, and Emerson expects it will take 20 years of operation to fully recover its investment.  

“When you’re competing with coal-fired energy at 5 cents a kilowatt hour, it’s difficult to make renewable energy pay off,” Hassell said. “In our case, the combination of incentives and offsets make the array pay off, but over a long period of time. Emerson isn’t normally in the business of making 20-year ROI investments.”   

Making Renewables Work
In coming years, the data center industry will face growing pressure to find workable ways to integrate renewable energy sources into projects. The demand is being driven by two trends: the growth of corporate social responsbility programs that focus on carbon neutrality, and the potential for federal legislation in the U.S. that will place caps on carbon emissions. 

While data centers aren’t specifically targeted by these initiatives, companies with carbon reduction pledges will find their data centers are among the largest energy users – meaning that sourcing data center power from renewable sources could be a major factor in meeting corporate carbon goals.  

That’s why companies like Emerson and i/o Data Centers – which plans a huge solar array at its Phoenix ONE facility – are investing in solar and looking for approaches that can work.    

Large Arrays Required
“Data centers are a really good candidate for solar power, but the math doesn’t add up right now,” said Jack Pouchet, Director of Energy Initiatives at Emerson Network Power. “To power a data center completely, you need a collector space that’s 8 to 10 times the size of your data center. It gets expensive, and it’s one of the reasons data centers aren’t jumping up and down to install solar.”

But prices are moving in the right direction, Pouchet says. “There’s a glut of PV panels, and the market continues to see declining prices on photovoltaics,” he said.

As prices improve and companies feel more pressure for on-site renewable energy, Pouchet says the geography of data center solar usage may be steered by incentives that alter the economics.

“There are states that are ideal for solar,” he said. “New Jersey, Hawaii, Oregon and California have very attractive utility and state rebates and incentives.”

The Emerson project used SunTechsolar panels and a DC-to-AC photovoltaic inverter from Solectra Renewables. Emerson’s solar array is engineered to survive wind storms of up to 150 miles per hour, as well as major earthquakes - a concern since St. Louis is not far from the New Madrid seismic zone.

The view from under the solar array, which faces south and is angled to capture sunlight.

For additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.

The findings were among the data points from Emerson’s bi-annual survey of its Data Center Users Group (DCUG), which polls more than 120 data center, facility and IT managers shared information about future plans for their data centers. The survey results were previewed earlier this month during the two-day DCUG spring conference in Washington, D.C.

The survey revealed that the current economic environment is having an effect on data center operations. Sixty one percent of respondents in the DCUG survey said they had been forced to cut their budgets’ while 35 percent said they were forced to delay new data center builds or expansion projects.

Not surprisingly, energy efficiency continued to be a front-of-mind issue for most data center managers, with 47 percent saying it was “one of their top concerns.” A surprisingly close second was adequate monitoring, which was a top concern for 46 percent of respondents.  

See Emerson’s announcement for additional details from the survey.

For more about Emerson, see our Emerson Network Power Channel. For additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.