By John P. Mello Jr., Contributing Writer
As energy costs have climbed in recent times, the once-blank check that data center operators were willing to write for their information processing hubs is becoming a quaint anachronism. Energy savings has become more than just an environmental concern for businesses, but an operational necessity for all data center managers, as Bryant University in Smithfield illustrated this month when it opened up an energy-efficient data center.
The university worked with IBM and West Kingston-based APC-MGE, whose InfraStruXure product was used to manage the power and cooling requirements for the center. Alistair Pim, vice president for global strategic accounts at APC-MGE, spoke about the project with Providence Business News.
PBN: Why are companies more concerned with energy consumption now than they were in the past?
PIM: In the old days, people knew power could be a problem so they just stuck a UPS [uninterruptible power supply] and maybe a generator at the back of the data center. Things didn’t change that frequently or dramatically.
But two things have happened recently. One, there are more high-density boxes going into the data center with the arrival of blade servers and some of the new switches from Cisco and people like that. Data centers weren’t designed for that stuff in the first place.
Second, you have the rising cost of energy. As you put in high-density stuff, it draws more power, so all of a sudden there’s a blip in your utility bill. When people start making noise about that, it creates awareness at the C level of a company, and all of a sudden you have data center managers running around asking, how do I keep my energy costs down? And how do I deal with those high-density boxes?
PBN: Is that what happened at Bryant?
PIM: It had enough power and cooling in its old data centers, but it didn’t have it in the right places. When you put in high-density blade servers, you put them in your existing rows and you may think you have enough cooling, but the air doesn’t get to the right place.
PBN: Why couldn’t they get the cool air where it was needed?
PIM: In the old days, people would put perimeter cooling around the data center and it would blow air under a raised floor with holes in it and the cold air would rise as it warmed up. That was OK for a certain level of density, but as you scatter more high-density equipment around the data center, it draws more power and creates more heat in a smaller space.
Older cooling systems don’t allow you to direct cold air at a particular place. You can’t be predictable about where you want to put your cold air. InfraStruXure, instead of putting cooling units around a room, puts them in the same row as the IT rack. That allows us to control where the cold air goes and where you suck the hot air from. It’s also more energy-efficient because by being closer to the heat load, you pump cold air a much shorter distance.
PBN: Are there different challenges with academic institutions than with businesses?
PIM: They’re very similar. There’s a difference in the software they like to use and the way they arrive at their budget constraints. We went around several iterations of the design with Bryant to meet how they wanted to use their space and how they wanted to pay for it.
PBN: In the past, data centers were built with excess capacity, which can waste energy as well as computing resources. Now the buzz is about “right-sizing” data centers. How do you do that?
PIM: If you want to right-size things, you want to put them into smaller modular chunks. For instance, if you were planning now for a future load of 80 kVA [kilovolt ampПres], you can use a rack that accepts 20 kVa modules. You populate the rack with the power you need now and add modules as you need them later.
PBN: In addition to power management and energy conservation, InfrastruXure addresses data center security concerns?
PIM: We have sensors that can tell you if a door is open to your data center. We have cameras to photograph people entering the data center. We also have sensors to tell you if there’s the wrong type of gas in the data center or if there’s liquid in there.
PBN: What kind of developments are on the horizon to make data centers more efficient?
PIM: There’s a lot of work going on to optimize the linkage between the load – the servers, storage and switches – and the power and cooling that goes to the load. If you optimize the way the two work as a system, then you save energy there.
