EPA Sends Data Center Power Study to Congress

BDPrime writes "We've all been hearing ad nauseum about power and cooling issues in the data center. Now the EPA has issued a final report to Congress detailing the problem and what might be done to fix it. Most likely what will happen is the EPA will add servers and data centers into its Energy Star program. If you don't feel like reading the entire 133-page report, the 14-page executive summary is a little easier to get through."

Re:Summery

[Anonymous Coward]

These forecasts indicate that unless energy efficiency is improved beyond current trends, the federal government's electricity cost for servers and data centers could be nearly $740 million annually by 2011, with a peak load of approximately 1.2 GW.

It then goes on to describe three scenarios that decrease this to various extents but require work and preparation.

Essentially, we're going to end up building 10 more power plants in the next 4 years because we're so fucking stupid that we can't take simple measures on our current data centers to make them even a little bit more efficient. If you ask me, energy is just too cheap. Put a cap limit on energy use and everything over goes up in price exponentially for a facility. Then you'll see them start to listen to you.

Simple Solution

[evilviper]

I've long been dumbfounded by the way datacenters charge. They seemingly all charge a hell of a lot for physical space, and then almost completely ignore power requirements. This seems incredibly strange, since datacenter operating costs are pretty much tied directly to power consumption (monthly electricity fees, UPSes, electrical generators, cooling, etc.), and only incidentally to physical space.

Further, the cost to handle each extra watt is multiplied thanks to cooling, power back-up, wiring, etc., while increasing the physical size of the building, constructing more datacenters, etc. is just a flat (linear) cost, and mostly just a one-time expenditure at that.

This strange arrangement is what has led us here. It's not the natural evolution of technology to cram as much power consumption into as tiny a box as possible. It's an artificial need, created by the idiotic distribution of fees common to datacenters.

If a few large datacenters declared their fees as a small $$$ value for each unit of space, and additionally a few dollars, per watt of power consumption, you'd see the problem naturally fix itself, through normal economic forces. As soon as watts are the defining factor, companies won't pay more for a cramped 1U server rather than an (inexpensive) 2U or 3U server. You will also see companies happy to pay more for lower-powered server hardware, as having them directly bear the energy cost will make buying efficient servers a significant savings to them.

Virtualization?

[tji]

I just grabbed the executive summary version, and didn't see any mention of virtualization..

To me, this seems like one of the more important aspects of power efficiency. Individual server efficiency is important, but the gains from higher utilization could be even more significant. Adding another core to a hypervisor will always be more efficient than adding a new system (CPU, Power Supply, disks, video, etc..). The energy efficient hardware can also be applied to the hypervisor hosts. Build efficient servers, and use as few of them as practical.

Many data centers are already greatly decreasing their server count using virtualization. This should be part of any data center energy efficiency discussion.

Re:Great scott!

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

$740 million? That's like 4.2 days of the Iraq war!
($177M/day for Iraq http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nat ion/president/2004-08-26-iraq-war-clock_x.htm [usatoday.com]

That sounds like a big number, and is for most of us, but not for the Federal government. About 29 cents more in taxes off each paycheck (assuming 100 M taxpayers, and paychecks every 2 weeks).

There are much bigger fish to fry.

Also, there is only so much one can cut the energy use, and thus that cost down, and still get the business of the government done. And the improvements in efficiency will require hardware, software, and personnel which have their own costs. Eventually you will hit a point where there is no longer a return on investment to make it worthwhile.

Re:Simple Solution

[Nezer]

It probably would cost to much to bother reporting on...

Because when you run a multi-million dollar data center, you clearly can't afford install a few-hundred dollar device in each customer's rack especially if it's a major part of how you bill your customer.

Look, the power companies do exactly what the parent poster suggests. Imagine if power companies charged a flat rate each month based on the square footage of your house. There would no incentive (unless your a save-the-planet hippie type which isn't a bad thing) to turn up the setting on the air conditioner (or turn it off all together), keep incandescent lights running 24/7 along with the giant plasma TV. This is essentially how data centers operate today. There is no motivation to have energy efficient servers unless you're the one that owns the data center and pays the power bill. Today the best a data center owner can do is invest in more efficient cooling systems and that's about it.

Re:cogeneration

[hcdejong]

Humidity, pollution and other things as well as physical access must be controlled.

Pollution is easily taken care of with a filter. Controlling physical access is trivial. Humidity may be a bit more involved, but then again, you're heating the incoming air which reduces its relative humidity. Condensation isn't likely. If it does turn out to be a problem, use a heat exchanger and preheat the incoming air using the exhaust air.

But it is not terribly practicle to plug the plenum passages once a year.

So? Install a valve. The savings should be enough to cover the cost of some extra ducting.

Re:Simple Solution

[ICLKennyG]

This is already happening to a functional point. Navisite, the host we use here at this company, charges by the square foot, however you only get so many watts per square foot. We have (2) 19" racks about half full of hardware with a total physical footprint of under 9 square feet; we could even get it under 5. However due to the power density we have 100 square feet of space that we rent. Because we use hyper dense blade servers for the management efficiency we fill a "racks" space of power with aproxamately a single blade chassis. So while we aren't physicly using 100 square feet, we have to have that space blocked out because we are drawing that much power off of their infrastructure, and so we pay for it. Same concept, just different implementation.

I would say that 1% of the nation's power for every computer isn't that much when you consider how incredibly tied in we are, and the savings in power created by the use of those computers. Simple example. Before the electronic age if one wanted to buy something over a specific value they would comparison shop, likely driving all over town to find the lowest price. Now you just hop online, find who has the lowest price and go pick it up, or better yet have it delivered in which case many trips are "car pooled" into one more efficient trip.

Power is a concern for computing, but we need to quit being Chicken Little about this problem.

Re:Great scott!

[aaarrrgggh]

Also, there is only so much one can cut the energy use, and thus that cost down, and still get the business of the government done. And the improvements in efficiency will require hardware, software, and personnel which have their own costs. Eventually you will hit a point where there is no longer a return on investment to make it worthwhile.

The same thing was said for many other things over the years; lighting pops to mind. Offices used to consume about 3 watts per square foot of office area in the 70's. In the 80's, they got it down to 2, and in the 90's around 1.5. Today, with a bit of effort, you can get it under a half a watt per square foot. With automatic controls factored in, the daily power consumption has dropped by a factor of 6-7 on average over 35 years.

Interestingly, offices consume roughly the same amount of power today as 35 years ago. If not for lighting energy savings, many of the computer innovations over the last 20 years would not have been practical, since buildings would not have enough power and cooling capacity to support the increased loads.

Saving 50% of the total energy consumption of a PC today might help usher in the next technological innovation. Don't be too quick to poo-poo things that don't sound cool on the surface. Their just might be a market for piece-work server virtualization in a few years...