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UPDATE:
Regular best-practices review of design and operational practices in small data centers around US could improve their efficiency by about 20 percent and achieve a cumulative energy-cost reduction of $1.1 billion, according to the latest report by the Green Grid.
The organization presented results of its energy-efficiency assessment of a small EPA data center during a forum NYSE Euronext hosted at the New York Stock Exchange. Members of the assessment team identified ways in which the Arlington, Va., facility could reduce its energy-cost by about $15,000 per year.
“The goal for the program was to identify a small server room conduct an assessment and to do it in a publically transparent way,” Green Grid Director Kathrin Winkler said. “The results were quite a bit of opportunity.” Winkler also holds the post of Senior Director of Corporate Sustainability at EMC Corporation.
Main issues that drove down the data center’s efficiency were over-sized and underutilized power and cooling infrastructure, lack of virtualization and resource sharing. Best operational practices were not applied universally.
As a result, the facility’s PUE figure came to about 2.9.
A major reason for Green Grid’s choosing one of about 100 small EPA data centers for the project was to reduce the “vendor allegiance” factor that would be more present had the group examined a privately owned facility, said Tom Brey of IBM’s Systems and Technology Group. Brey is also a Green Grid director.
Also on Friday, the Green Grid announced the launch of a new online PUE reporting tool on its Web site. “The PUE reporting tool is now online,” Brey said. “It allows data center operators to fill in data consistently in order to report the PUE.”
Through use of the tool, the organization is aiming to create a database of PUE figures of various data centers that can be used by industry and the government for benchmarking and statistical purposes.
Another tool the Green Grid and the U.S. Department of Energy are in the process of developing jointly is the DC Pro tool – an online tool for identifying energy inefficiencies in data centers. “Where it is right now is pretty far along in the process,” Winkler said. “Most of the core development work has been done and it’s going now through our (approval) process.”
She said it was too early to provide a target release date.
END UPDATE
Industry consortium The Green Grid uploaded a free online tool and maps which give European data center managers the ability to calculate free air and water cooling options at existing and planned mission critical facilities.
The tool (available here) maps air temperatures based on data from over 600 weather stations throughout Europe.
The update to the tool extends coverage and maps to 33 European countries, earlier versions covered the US and Japan.
'It can now help data centre managers in Europe lower energy consumption and related costs, potentially extending the life and improving the energy efficiency of data centre facilities,' the Green Grid said.
“Data centres with increasing IT loads require more power to cool them, so finding cooling options that use less power is critical not only for organisations that don’t have resources to build new facilities but also for those that want to save money,” said Vic Smith, Dell representative and EMEA technical work group chair of The Green Grid.
“For much of the year, the air outside data centres can be cooler than the air inside. This tool that The Green Grid has developed will help determine how much free cooling a specific data centre can leverage.”
According to Green Grid calculations a 1 megawatt (1000kW) data centre in Luton, England, with power at a cost of 13.6 cents per kW hour, could save €340,000 per year using free cooling, or €210,000 per year using a water-side economiser. And a 1 megawatt (1000kW) data centre in Paris, France, with power at 13.2 cents per kW hour, could save €330,000 per year using free cooling, or €180,000 per year using a water-side economiser.
The tool is available for the following European countries: Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russian Federation, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, and United Kingdom.
Related Interview: Jim Pappas of the Green Grid talks about developing metrics
Related Event: DatacenterDynamics London 10th, 11th, November 2009
Read the interview with Vic Smith:
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