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Should Servers Come With Batteries?
November 27th, 2009 : Rich MillerWill the data center of the future have no central UPS units, and be filled with servers with on-board batteries? The data center team at Facebook believes it should, and is pledging to share its best practices - and perhaps wield some of its clout with vendors and data center operators - as it presses its case for change.
Facebook recently disclosed its plans to adopt a novel power distribution design pioneered by Google that removes uninterruptible power supply (UPS) and power distribution units (PDUs) from the data center. The new design shifts the UPS and battery backup functions from the data center into the cabinet by adding a 12 volt battery to each server power supply.
While many best practices shared by Google, Microsoft and Facebook can help other data center operators save energy and money, other customizations are impractical.
Big Companies, Big Innovation
“A lot of the innovation in the field is being driven by companies with thousands of servers who really care about the efficiency of these things,” said Facebook’s Amir Michael, who previously worked on Google’s data center team. “We have capital to be able to afford engineers to solve these problems. It’s not really benefiting the rest of the industry. Smaller companies who might deploy fewer servers can’t go and design their own systems.”In discussing Facebook’s plans for on-board batteries, Michael discussed ways these innovations might become more widely available.
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Facebook Follows Google to Data Center Savings
November 27th, 2009 : Rich Miller
A graphic of the new data center power distribution system being implemented at Facebook, which replaces a central UPS with a battery built into the power supply.
Facebook is stepping up its efforts to make its data centers cheaper and more efficient, and is following in the footsteps of Google in several of its key initiatives. Facebook says it’s streamlining its servers, and also plans to adopt a novel power distribution design pioneered by Google.
The social network’s plans were discussed by Amir Michael, a server and data center engineer at Facebook, in a Nov. 17 engineering Tech Talk in Palo Alto, Calif. Michael joined Facebook in March after six years on the data center team at Google, where he designed cooling and electrical systems.
“The industry has discussed many ways of optimizing servers and data centers,” Michael said. “We don’t claim to be the original thought leader on many of these things, but we are gonna be one of the few companies who’s actually going to begin implementing them.”
Shift to On-Board Battery
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That’s true of the most significant change outlined by Michael: a new power distribution design that removes traditional uninterruptible power supply (UPS) and power distribution units (PDUs) from the data center. The new design shifts the UPS and battery backup functions from the data center into the cabinet, adding a 12 volt battery to each server power supply. -
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Power Densities Likely to Drive Expansions
November 19th, 2009 : Rich Miller
Average power densities continue to rise in data centers, and are affecting the lifespan of existing data center facilities, according to new survey data from Emerson Network Power. A majority of data centers say they will run out of capacity within two years, suggesting a wave of expansions is in the pipeline.
Thirteen percent of the members of Emerson’s Data Center User Group (DCUG) said the average power density in their data centers was 12 kilowatts a cabinet or higher, with five participants reporting average power loads exceeding 20 kw a cabinet. Eleven percent reported average densities between 8 and 12 kw, while the largest group of users – 36 percent – cited loads of 4 to 8 kw per rack.
Short on Power, Not Space
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The survey reinforces the prevailing wisdom that data centers are running out of power before they run out of physical space. Thirty four percent of respondents cited power as the primary factor limiting data center capacity, while just 14 percent cited floor space. -
Data Center Leasing: It’s All About the Megawatts
November 11th, 2009 : Rich Miller
The growing importance of electric power is remaking the business of leasing data center space, with megawatts replacing square feet as the primary benchmark for real estate deals.“Our business is all about leasing access to power,” said Michael Foust, the CEO of Digital Realty Trust, the largest data center developer landlord. “The square footage is almost secondary in some cases.”
DuPont Fabros Technology, another large developer of wholesale data center space, now describes all its leases in megawatts in its financial reporting. As data centers consume more power, electricity is the benchmark that matters, according to DuPont Fabros president and CEO Hossein Fateh.
“Any customer that needs a megawatt – that’s 4,000 servers – better be ready to talk power, or they’re not even qualified to have that job,” Fateh said earlier this year. “What we’re charging for is the availability of power.”
Wanted: Cheap, Abundant Power
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As companies like Google and Microsoft build ever-larger data centers packed with tens of thousands of servers, they are choosing to build in places with cheap and abundant power like central Washington state, Iowa and North Carolina. -
Power Grid Hacking Back in the News
November 9th, 2009 : Rich MillerCan hackers disable the U.S. power grid? This issue, which has been debated for years in the security community, is once again in the news after a segment on cybersecurity on CBS’ 60 Minutes Sunday night, which reports that hackers disabled parts of the power grid in Brazil in 2005 and 2007. The CIA first discussed these events in early 2008, but without divulging the identity of the foreign country that was affected.
Much of the recent discussion about the security of the power grid has been influenced by a proof-of-concept attack released in September 2007 in which the Department of Homeland Security used an electronic attack to destroy a large diesel generator, apparently by altering the engine’s operating cycle and causing it to malfunction. It was part of an experiment named “Aurora” conducted in March 2007 at the Department of Energy’s Idaho lab. A video shows the generator begin to shake and shutter as bolts are sheared off, after which clouds of white and black smoke shoot forth from the engine. The Aurora video was featured in the 60 Minutes report Sunday night.
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Right-Sizing Your Power Infrastructure
October 29th, 2009 : Kevin NormandeauThis new Eaton white paper explores strategies to optimize energy efficiency in the data center without impeding growth
Data centers today are undergoing unprecedented change, as new technologies such as virtualization, cloud computing, and voice over IP help lower operating cost, conserve floor space and simplify management.
Yet those same technologies are also impacting the data center power chain in significant and varying ways. Some companies, for example, consolidated their servers only to find themselves with more energy and cooling capacity than they need. Others installed hot, high¬ density blade servers only to find themselves with less power than they require.
To compound matters, now is an especially poor time to bear the burdens of an oversized or undersized power infrastructure. With margins tight and energy costs rising, no company can afford to spend more than necessary on its electrical systems. Yet with IT playing a vital role in business success, organizations must also ensure that they have enough clean, reliable power to keep mission¬ critical systems continuously available.
Now more than ever, businesses need a power infrastructure that’s right ¬sized to their precise energy requirements. This white paper discusses the ways in which new technologies are impacting power demand patterns, explores the consequences of having too much power capacity or too little and then provides concrete advice on strategies for right¬sizing your power systems. Click here to download this free white paper for Eaton.
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Roundup: Tilera Debuts 100-Core Processors
October 26th, 2009 : Rich MillerHow many cores do you need in your processor? Upstart chipmaker Tilera is previewing a new processor featuring up to 100 cores that can work in parallel, and is touting the energy efficiency of its technology. The company claims its approach has simplified programming for multi-core processors, which has been cited by analysts as a barrier to adoption of many-core parallel processing. Tilera says its two-dimensional iMesh interconnect “eliminates the need for an on-chip bus and its Dynamic Distributed Cache (DDC) system allows each cores’ local cache to be shared coherently across the entire chip. These two key technologies enable the TILE Architecture performance to scale linearly with the number of cores on the chip.” Here’s a roundup of notable analysis and commentary from around the web:
- VentureBeat: Tilera “believes that this hydra beast will be able to improve the computing power of data centers while reducing their power consumption at the same time.”
- GigaOm says Tilera “is tackling the Mount Everest of chips” but adds that “new generation of cloud computing and demand for ever more resources to power social networks, online video and devices, have created challenges for data center operators that may allow Tilera to succeed.”
- TG Daily also notes the potential application in cloud computing. “Cloud computing is a very broad term and it is obviously a huge market,” Tilera spokesperon Bob Doud told TG. “We certainly expected to broaden our foothold and market share over time.”
- PC World notes that “the chips could serve as co-processors alongside x86 chips, or potentially replace the chips in appliances and servers.”
The Tilera chips will be available in 2010, the company says.
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Arch Rock Launches Monitoring Tool
October 26th, 2009 : Rich Miller
An overview of a sample configuration for the Arch Rock Energy Optimizer for data centers. Click for larger image.
Arch Rock today is introducing a new version of its Energy Optimizer wireless monitoring system customized for data center usage. The product was initially launched in April to provide energy reporting for commercial buildings, and has been updated with additional sensors to measure temperature and air pressure, and custom reporting on a data center’s power usage and thermal status.
Arch Rock joins a growing number of players targeting the market for wireless monitoring products for use in data center retrofits. Other companies targeting this niche include SynapSense, Sentilla, SensiCast and HP (which uses SynapSense in its soluton).
Wireless monitoring is valuable in data centers because it allows company to retrofit existing data centers to detect “hot spots” where cooling may not be reaching servers. Fine-tuning cooling systems allows data centers to make more efficient use of the energy used for cooling, which often consumes nearly as much power as IT equipment. Measuring data center energy use is a growth area as companies seek to get a handle on energy costs and carbon emissions ahead of anticipated regulatory efforts by the Obama administration.
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10 Ways to Improve Power System Availability
October 23rd, 2009 : Kevin NormandeauOnce, IT was just another important business resource. Today, IT is the business for many companies. Without it, most organizations would be incapable of serving customers, collaborating with partners, developing new products or performing other basic business functions.
As a result, data center availability has become an essential precondition to competitiveness and profitability. Yet despite their best efforts to achieve “five nines” availability, businesses remain vulnerable to a variety of threats. Chief among them are issues affecting electrical power systems. Data centers rely on a continuous supply of clean electricity. However, anything from a subtle power system design flaw to a failure in the electrical grid can easily bring down even the most modern and sophisticated data center.
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