Future challenges for data center operators

1. Latest Developments in Data Centre
Energy and Power Issues
Bill St. Arnaud
Bill.st.arnaud@gmail.com

2. Theme of this talk
• Electrical energy cost and its reliability are
increasingly the two biggest concerns for most
data center operators
• This talk will focus on the latest developments on
alternate energy sources and power reliability for
data centers
• But consideration of power issues and reliability
also impacts data and network architecture of
data center
2

3. Cost of power for data centers
•
•
•
Power consumption is jumping astronomically
– 19% last year, 15% this year
Electrical cost also increasing significantly
– E.g 30% in Ontario
Within next 5 – 10 years we will have carbon tax
or cap and trade
– Will raise prices another 5-20%
3

4. Growth Projections Data Centers
• Half of ICT consumption is data centers
• In ten years 50% of today’s Data Centers and major
science facilities in the US will have insufficient power
and cooling;*
• CO2 emissions from US datacenters greater than all
CO2 emissions from Netherlands or Argentina
http://bit.ly/cW6jEY
• Data center electricity is 31GW globally, and that will
increase 19 percent in 2012 http://dlvr.it/1RwhWG
*Source: Gartner; Meeting the DC power and cooling challenge

5. Reliability of the Grid
•
Weather related outages and duration have
increased significantly
•
Other threats include :
– Geo-magnetic solar storms
– EMP and RF weapons used by terrorists
•
Easy to protect data center from such events,
but much harder to protect electrical grid
infrastructure
•
Particular vulnerability is Large Power
Transformers (LPTs), which are customdesigned, expensive to replace and hard to
transport.
– LPTs weight between 100 and 400 tons, cost
millions of dollars and can take as long as 20
months to manufacture
5

6. Scary reading
• “US Energy sector vulnerabilities to climate change and extreme
weather” US Department of Energy July 2013
– http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2013/07/f2/20130716Energy%20Sector%20Vulnerabilities%20Report.pdf
•
•
Recent Sample outages
Rising water temps forcing power
plant shutdowns
Coal and nuclear power generating
capacity will decrease by between
4 and 16 percent in the United
States and a 6 to 19 percent
decline in Europe due to lack of
cooling water.
• http://www.reuters.com/artic
le/2012/06/04/climate-waterenergyidUSL3E8H41SO20120604
6

7. Half of US experienced record
droughts or deluges in 2012
2010 warmest year ever – we
are only at the start of the
curve of the hockey stick. The
worst is yet to come

8. Blame it on Canada
How warming in the Arctic affects weather in Texas and Europe
• Warming Arctic slowing down jet stream
– There’s been a 20 percent drop in the zonal
wind speeds.
• As get stream slows down, it leads to those
bigger, long lived kinks in the jet stream.
– That amplification is associated with
persistent weather patterns that lead to
“extremes” like drought, flooding and heat
waves.
• Those slow-moving, persistent waves of
weather energy may have played a role in the
big snows that hammered Europe this
winters, as well as the extreme drought that
hit South West US
• http://summitcountyvoice.com/2012/01/14/
global-warming-revenge-of-the-atmosphere/
8

9. Future Droughts
• Palmer Drought Severity Index,
or PDSI.
• The most severe drought in
recent history, in the Sahel region
of western Africa in the 1970s, had
a PDSI of -3 or -4.
• By 2030 Western USA could see
-4 to -6. Drought in Texas clearly
caused by global warming:
http://goo.gl/QjHRS
• By 2100 some parts of the U.S.
and Latin America could see -8 to 10 PDSI, while Mediterranean
areas could see drought in the -15
or -20 range.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39741525/ns/us_new
s-environment/

10. Dramatic changes in precipitation
•
•
•
Every continent has suffered record rainfalls
Rains submerged one-fifth of Pakistan, a
thousand-year deluge swamped Nashville and
storms just north of Rio caused the deadliest
landslides Brazil has ever seen.
Observed increase in precipitation in the last few
decades has been due in large part to a
disproportionate increase in heavy and extreme
precipitation rates which are exceeding
predictions made in models

11. What does 1C average temperature
mean?
• In the 1700s – when global average
temperature was .8C colder than now,
New Yorkers could walk from
Manhattan to Staten Island on ice as
thick as 8 feet
– http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/31
/in-the-little-ice-age-lessons-for-today/
11

12. What is the solution for DC operator?
Reduce dependency on electrical grid as much as possible:
1.
Develop Climate Change Preparedness plan as per President
Obama’s Executive Order
2.
Make sure your diesel generator is properly installed and serviced
3.
Get independent source of electrical power from your own dams,
windmills or solar panel array
4.
Use natural gas or bio-gas to generate electricity through microturbines, cogen or fuel cells
5.
Build highly distributed data centers using following the wind or
follow the sun architectures
12

13. President Obama’s Executive Order on
Climate Change Preparedness
• All US government departments, agencies, data centers, etc must develop
climate change preparedness plans
• States, municipalities, universities and other institutions are also
encouraged to develop similar plans
• Disaster preparedness plans must cover range of scenarios of severe
flooding, droughts, hurricanes, long term power outages, etc
• DC operators must look at number of scenarios that could significantly
impact operations
Presentation title

14. Lessons from Sandy about backup
diesels
•
Make sure fuel is changed every year
– Diesel fuel deteriorates much faster than gasoline
•
Arrange for long term, high priority fuel contracts from
a number of refineries
•
Make sure IT staff know how to change fuel and air
filters
•
Make sure fuel pumps are self priming, collocated with
diesel and connected to UPS
•
Make sure all electrical cabling, transformers and
switch gear are in water tight compartments
– Double check all egress and ingress ports through
walls
14

15. Many DCs are acquiring their own
power dams
•
OVH in Montreal - worlds largest data center
operator
•
Cisco, EMC in Holyoke, MA
•
Google in Finland
•
There are many abandoned paper mills,
aluminum smelters, etc in Canada with their
own power dams
•
Some DCs are looking to deploy “run of the
river” generating systems that require no dams

16. Many other examples
Ecotricity in UK builds windmills at
data center locations with no capital
cost to user
Hydro-electric powered data centers
ASIO solar powered data centers
17

17. Fuel Cells, Microturbines, Cogen
• Several data centers being built independent of
electrical grid using natural gas
• Converting gas to electricity can be done with
micro turbines, fuel cells or traditional cogen
• Cost of electricity from gas much cheaper than
from grid
– Can sell excess power to the grid
– Standby propone tank in case of disruption in gas
feed
– Power distribution system can be sized as demand
warrants from growth in data center
• In Europe and US several data centers are using
biogas from farm or human waste
17

18. Follow the Sun/Wind Distributed Data
Center
GreenStar Network
World’s First Zero Carbon Cloud/Internet

19. SDN Follow the wind/Follow the sun
European GSN
Domain
Canadian GSN
Domain
Export VM
Notify EU
Cloud Manager
Cloud Manager
Host
Resource
Network
Manager
Cloud Manager
Internet
Dynamically Configure
IP Tunnel
Host
Resource
• Shudown VM
• Copy Image
• Update VM Context
• Start VM
Mantychore2
VM
Shared
storage
Shared
storage
VM
Lightpath
Host
Cloud Proxy
Optical switch
Optical switch
Cloud Proxy
Host

20. Hewlett Packard & Clarkson U
GreenCloud
• Optimizing the utilization of the available
renewable power for computing by intelligently
redistributing computational load;
• Minimizing losses associated with power
transmission by placing the PODs near the power
source;
• Providing energy and design efficiency through
the use of additional passive cooling for the PODs
• Use the wind power that is currently stranded, i.e.
not-delivered to the grid due to the T&D constraints.

21. IBM National GreenCloud Vision

22. Don’t forget the wide area network
• Network is just as vulnerable as data center to reliability in electrical
grid
• Most telco based networks have multiple electrical powered
repeater huts for amplification and add/drop
– Usually in remote locations and more difficult to service, or re-fuel
generators
• Most DC operators are choosing dark fiber for reliability reasons
– Modern dark fiber networks can operate at distances up to 1500km
without a single electrical repeater
– Optical repeaters only draw 40W power and can easily be powered
with batteries and solar charging
– Architecture is far simpler than telco network and thus easier to
manage and upgrade
22

23. Let’s Keep The Conversation Going
Bill St. Arnaud is a R&E Network and Green IT
consultant who works with clients on a variety
of subjects such as green data centers and
networks. He also works with clients to
develop practical solutions to reduce GHG
emissions from ICT (See http://greenbroadband.blogspot.com/) .
E-mail
Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com
Blogs
http://green-broadband.blogspot.com
Twitter
http://twitter.com/BillStArnaud