Statistics

SUPPORT (183 Members) . GROW (7 Association). PROMOTE (Visitors from 14 Countries). (Check The Site's Statistics)

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

"Save Money!"UK Datacentre Networking Group addresses some of the ‘how to' aspects of datacentre efficiency

Over 130 datacentre professionals converged upon London’s Chiswell Street Brewery for “Driving Datacentre Energy Efficiency”, the title of the third meeting of the UK Datacentre Networking Group - a joint initiative between datacentre conference specialists DataCenterDynamics and the British Institute for Facilities Management (BIFM). The Group provides a forum for IT, facility and data centre managers to share knowledge and best practice with their peers.

Introducing the event, Mick Dalton, chair of the UK Datacentre Networking Group, set the context; “Energy saving” he said “ is more than a matter of compliance with new UK and EU regulations and saving money, it is also good corporate citizenship”. Commenting on a template for the proposed energy rating of buildings, Dalton warned that the gap between the rated efficiency and operational efficiency could be an obvious metric for some form of carbon taxation in the future.

The UK Datacentre Networking Group was pleased to welcome as its final speaker of the day, Arun Shenoy, director, Intel (UK) Digital Enterprise. Opening with a strong statement regarding the energy waste which is endemic in every layer of network architecture, Shenoy said that inefficiencies will be created if the IT equipment itself is inefficient and that IT manufacturers were equally culpable.
He went on to explain how Intel’s recently introduced CoreTM and multicore technologies have, for the first time, defied the long standing trend in which every improvement in microprocessor power was accompanied by a corresponding and linear increase in electrical power demand. By adding further cores to the chips, Intel had successfully managed to provide both power and efficiency advancements at device level, achieving higher performance at lower clock speed and, therefore lower energy demand.

Shenoy went on to talk about the architecture of the company’s new datacentre which has adopted lessons learned when constructing Intel’s wafer fabrication plants. “A typical Intel factory costs $4 billion,” said Shenoy. “Like datacentres, they’re expensive facilities which are expected to have a long operational life, high integrity, high availability and be in operation 24 x 7. Our datacentre houses 56,000 servers and we wanted to set a benchmark – to be able to cool the highest wattage per square, but without costing the earth.”

“Our 2-storey, vertical flow through, high density datacentre has infrastructure which can cool 500 watts per square foot. It’s at the top end of what can be cooled, but not at the top end of what it costs. What’s more, Intel will shortly be putting the IP for this architecture into the public domain.”

George Rockett, Director, UK Datacentre Networking Group said: “As one of the biggest consumers of utility power, efficiency should be a major concern for facility and business managers. With all sorts of environmental and energy efficiency legislation about to bite, it’s no longer acceptable for us to simply accept that inefficiency inescapable when trying to achieve highly available and highly redundant facilities. We need to take our own steps to regulate energy consumption before we end up regulated. The UK Datacentre Networking Group is glad to have the interest and support of organizations such as the Carbon Trust and Energyfactor in identifying tangible opportunities for savings.”

“Driving Datacentre Energy Efficiency” closed with a Q & A session, followed by networking and refreshments hosted by APC, K8T and Rittal. The UK Datacentre Networking Group will meet again next quarter. To view the presentations or to find out more about the UK Datacentre Networking Group please visit www.datacenterdynamics.com and click on the UK Network Group site navigation bar.

No comments: