1. How Commercial Best Practices &
Lessons Learned can Save the Feds
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(http://www.greendca.org)
2. Agenda
1 About the GDCA
2 Lessons from the Commercial Sector
3 What the Feds Might Want to Consider
4 Three Project Examples
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2
3. About Green Data Center Alliance (GDCA)
GDCA is over 10,000 individual
members from 114 countries
-Awarded Grant from NYSERDA to
design DCEEF
-Evaluated 3 Firms Against Model
-30% Increase in New Members over
2010
-2nd Call For Best Practices issued
-The DCEEF model has been
downloaded by over 2,000 Data Center
Professionals
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4. GDCA – NYSERDA Program
GDCA has completed a two year work effort under a grant from NYSERDA. The program
had two major goals
1. Capture best practices at owner operator sites throughout the country
2. Assess three organizations against the model and where possible provide
potential projects for increased energy efficiency
What did this exercise teach us?
- There are a dozens of ways to get to the same end point
- Viewing the data center holistically works
- Every data center has an opportunity to increase efficiency
- Industry leaders actions can save others tremendous effort and cost
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5. Back to the FUTURE…
General Observations:
- Federal Data Centers are roughly 5 to 10 years behind their commercial
counterparts
- Heavy reliance on Equipment Vendors instead of consultants for decision making
- Lots of Legacy Sites with Planned Migrations
- Most in Early to Mid Stages of Virtualization
- Most Employing High % Blade Strategy
- Shared Federal Data Centers are not prepared for the folks moving into them
- Most Best Practices for Design, Build & Retrofit are largely ignored
- Relocation & Impact on Landing Site is also mostly ignored
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6. What Happened in the Commercial Sector?
Two Data Center Build cycles; 7 to 10 years ago and again 2 to 4
years ago – What Happened?
- Virtualization & Blades
- Fear of too hot, too cold
- Electrical & Mechanical Capacity projections based on
Name Plate data
- Only Commercial Data Centers being built are Collocation
Cloud Providers
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7. What They Do Now?
New Designs & Builds have basically stopped
Scrutiny of Projects & ROI shortened below 18 months
Went back to facilities and made simple retrofits to extend the life
and capacity of their facilities
Market Leaders targeted PUE and Industry Data Center “Rules”
and beat them
Others handed the keys to the collocation providers
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8. What the Federal Data Center Market Should
Consider
Slow Down…..Rushing through these decisions will quicken the
pace of their impending doom
Look to simple fixes first to extend the life of the data center
Morgan Stanley Deutsche Bank
Google Microsoft
Evaluate facilities strategically and compare options with TCO
Find Consultants that went through the commercial cycle
Relocations/Consolidations require tremendous data gathering
exercises, put it into a DCIM
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9. The Old Way
Example 1
-8,000 sqft.
-Paid Study @ roughly $10 per square foot for analysis (nearly 40 pages)
-Thousands of points captured
-Beautifully written, dozens of graphs, charts, tables and live models (40 to be exact)
-Provided PUE, DCiE and several other industry metrics on power, temp and humidity
Study SUGGESTED programs and ROI
-Better align air temperature control to rack inlet air
-Amend air volume
-Play with dew point controls
-Amend airflow to UPS rooms
Cost of Implementation: $460,000
Anticipated Annual Energy Savings: $84,000 per year
ROI 5.5 YEARS
**** Does not include cost of study
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10. Types of Actions:
Inexpensive (ROI < 24 Months)
Example 2
-One of 8 data center cells: 1,500 sqft cell for POC
-Half a day to walk site, capture air speed and spot temps.
-Half day to compile report into 2 page report/Scope
- 4 (30) Ton Units Delivering 50,000 CFM or 500 kW IT load
- Actual IT load 108 kW
- Client had deployed 4 ft. Cold Aisle with 56% flow tiles
- Over pressurized, lots of by pass air and recirculation
Project & ROI
-Better align air temperature control to rack inlet air by changing floor tiles
-Amend air volume and rebalance floor after implementation
Cost of Implementation: $15,000
Anticipated Annual Energy Savings: $25,000 per year
ROI 7.5 MONTHS
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11. The Best (ROI < 10 Months)
Example 3 – Google “Point of Presence” Rooms equivalent to small data center
-Optimized air flow through blanking, sealing gaps targeting trouble spots by changing floor
tile configuration
-Deploy cold aisle containment with curtains
-Raise height of CRAC air return by 4 feet for more uniform return air temp
-Increase temperature from 71 F to 81 F
-Increase humidity range to accept 20 to 80% relative humidity
-Able to reduce # of CRACs from 4 to 2
- Their cold aisle was actually cooler with the thermostat turned up and half the CRACs running
Project & ROI
Cost of Implementation: $25,000
Anticipated Annual Energy Savings: $67,000 per year
ROI 2.7 MONTHS
PUE dropped from 2.4 to 1.5 in 5 rooms
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12. The Best (ROI < 10 Months)
Example 3 – Google “Point of Presence” Rooms equivalent to small data center
-Optimized air flow through blanking, sealing gaps targeting trouble spots by changing floor
tile configuration
-Deploy cold aisle containment with curtains
-Raise height of CRAC air return by 4 feet for more uniform return air temp
-Increase temperature from 71 F to 81 F
-Increase humidity range to accept 20 to 80% relative humidity
-Able to reduce # of CRACs from 4 to 2
- Their cold aisle was actually cooler with the thermostat turned up and half the CRACs running
Project & ROI
Cost of Implementation: $25,000
Anticipated Annual Energy Savings: $67,000 per year
ROI 2.7 MONTHS
PUE dropped from 2.4 to 1.5 in 5 rooms
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13. Questions?
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Editor's Notes
The Green Data Center Alliance started in accumulating members in June of 2008 and has steadily grown over the last three years. The award of an Innovation grant from NYSERDA helped us remain current and helped us gain access to hundreds of data center professionals. This engagement also included 3 evaluations against the model, and while not all participants chose to augment their space we learned a great deal about how organizations approach the space from all angles. We average 50 new individuals a week so interest in this topic does not seem to be waning and we hope to be part of the discussion for years to come. We are currently collecting our second round of best practices from end users and vendors and look forward to releasing the second revision by Fall of 2012.
The Green Data Center Alliance started in accumulating members in June of 2008 and has steadily grown over the last three years. The award of an Innovation grant from NYSERDA helped us remain current and helped us gain access to hundreds of data center professionals. This engagement also included 3 evaluations against the model, and while not all participants chose to augment their space we learned a great deal about how organizations approach the space from all angles. We average 50 new individuals a week so interest in this topic does not seem to be waning and we hope to be part of the discussion for years to come. We are currently collecting our second round of best practices from end users and vendors and look forward to releasing the second revision by Fall of 2012.
The Green Data Center Alliance started in accumulating members in June of 2008 and has steadily grown over the last three years. The award of an Innovation grant from NYSERDA helped us remain current and helped us gain access to hundreds of data center professionals. This engagement also included 3 evaluations against the model, and while not all participants chose to augment their space we learned a great deal about how organizations approach the space from all angles. We average 50 new individuals a week so interest in this topic does not seem to be waning and we hope to be part of the discussion for years to come. We are currently collecting our second round of best practices from end users and vendors and look forward to releasing the second revision by Fall of 2012.
We have learned that entering the organization in one of the 5 silos forces several things:
