Make it warmer



    While analysts predict the rapid growth of all types of traffic and the further penetration of applications and the Internet into our lives, Intel is seriously concerned about the increase in energy consumption of data centers and server rooms, which provide the majority of applications and websites. Already today it is known that data centers, in general, account for about 1.5% of global electricity consumption, which in money is approximately equivalent to 27 billion US dollars. These values ​​will only increase in the future, and according to IDC forecasts, they will double by 2014, that is, in just over two years.

    The answer to the question “why do data centers consume so much electricity?” Seems to be obvious. There are more and more smartphones and tablets, as well as users of these devices. But it is unlikely that the chips themselves can swallow 27 billion and not choke. Oddly enough, many data centers still remain an island of outdated technologies and views.

    From 40% to 50% of the energy consumed by the data center is spent on cooling and ensuring the operation of the UPS system, and only a third of the electricity supplied to the building forces the electrons to perform calculations. A data center is a factory of calculations, which means that any energy consumed not on the server side is wasted.

    Therefore, Intel has written a guide for building servers operating at higher temperatures. The higher the temperature, the lower the need for air conditioning, which means lower electricity bills or the ability to deploy more servers in one area. This is not to mention that you can use air from the street, minimizing its preparation (filtering or cooling). The use of large heat exchangers (economizers) can also make life easier and save money.

    Remember that: increasing temperature = lowering cooling = lowering energy consumption

    Intel employs a small number of experts who help governments and large customers design the best and most efficient data centers, after writing down their experiences in the White Books, which everyone interested can use. Lief Nielsen (Lief Nielsen) - one of the architects of data centers, worked with Korea Telecom and helped with the construction of a data center in Da Nang, Vietnam, talks about the concept of a data center with higher ambient temperature (HTA, which operates normally at a temperature of 27 ° C and higher. Intel even has experience building a data center operating at a temperature of 50 ° C, although a more common mode is the range from 27 to 40 ° C.

    A few examples of HTA data centers:
    • The converted Facebook data center in Santa Clara, California operates at a temperature of 27 ° C. His annual electricity bill fell by $ 229,000, and the company earned $ 294,761 from the federal government for energy bills.
    • In the Intel experimental data center in New Mexico, where 900 production servers are deployed, a 100% exchange of outdoor and indoor air is used at temperatures up to 33 ° C (without control and changes in air humidity, with minimal filtering). The resulting energy savings are estimated at 67%, which corresponds to an amount of $ 2.87 million when calculating for a 10 MW data center.
    • The Yahoo Coop datacenter operates without the use of chillers and needs cooling water only for a few days per year (estimated energy efficiency PUE = 1.08). The costs of 100 percent natural air cooling make up on average no more than 1% of the total energy consumption of a data center building.


    Another effective way to reduce costs may be to abandon uninterruptible power supplies in the data center - they include arrays of batteries that occupy a large area and use a considerable amount of electricity.

    Do you think this is fantastic? We just threw out the air conditioners and are going to do the same with the UPS - will the data center work effectively after that? What happens if an accident occurs in external power networks? Intel technology will come to your aid again.

    Very soon, spare batteries that perform the functions of the UPS will be placed inside the servers - like laptops. Intel Node Manager technology will instantly and automatically switch to built-in batteries in an unforeseen situation, and, if necessary, switch to a lower power consumption mode.

    In addition, Node Manager can do even more - just like a computer in a car monitors driving efficiency and tells you the fuel consumption of the hundred kilometers you have traveled, Intel Node Manager can help control energy consumption at the level of individual servers, racks, rows, and even data center as a whole. Intel estimates Node Manager’s efficiency at 30% energy savings without sacrificing data center performance.

    You can read how Node Manager is used by BMW, Baidu, Oracle, and China Telecom here and here .

    So, how to save $ 2.16 billion in one easy motion? It’s not difficult at all. It is enough to convince all IT managers to increase the temperature inside their data centers by only 5 ° С. Just turn the thermostat wheel a little bit.

    Intel IT uses many such solutions to make its own data centers (and there are 91 today) more efficient.

    Learn more at the new Intel Datacenter Efficiency website .

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