Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

HERD/Energy
The Programme in Higher Education,
Research and Development in the
Western Balkans 2010-2016

Analysis and optimization of energy

consumption of IT infrastructure

November, 2014

Analysis and optimization of energy

consumption of IT infrastructure*
Description: This is an accordance with Macedonian and
regional energy research priorities basis of the countrys
readiness and future potential, too. This project can help in
development of policies , methods and knowledge needed for
energy security, optimization and conservation in IT
infrastructures.
Proposed small R&D projects, will provide links between
academia and industry.
Small research project will contribute beside teaching and
research activities the collaboration with industry sector.
*This proposal was prepared in cooperation with Asseco SEE company
(http://asseco.com/see/).
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From industry sector

beginning
Over the last 40 years, the data center has gone through a
tremendous evolution.
ENIAC could be seen as the grandfather of the data centers we know today:
Prior to 1945-1955, the U.S. Army developed
a machine called Eniac (Electronic
Numerator, Integrator, Analyzer and
Computer): weight 27mt, 160m2 of floor
space, 150kW of power to deliver a compute
performance of 0.05 MIPS and 6 full-time
technicians to keep running.

past
During the 1960s, computers were large mainframes stored in
rooms what we call a data center today. They were costly and
businesses could rent out space on the mainframe to fulfill specific
functions.
During the 1980s, the computer industry experienced the boom of
the microcomputer era and computers were being widely used in
the office.
When the dot-com bubble occurred in the 1990s, so did the boom
of data centers. Businesses needed a quick way to establish
presence on the Internet.
In 2006 a U.S. government study put total power usage of all
servers in the U.S. at about 24 million MWh.
As of 2007, the average datacenter consumes as much energy as
25,000 homes.

present situation
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Average of annual energy usage, a 400W

server may use approximately 1,314 kWh a
year (which is simply just powering it on) to
about 2,600 kWh per year, energy costs are
800Euro to more about 1600Euro.

Typical data center

Analysis of a typical 460m2 data center shows

that demand-side computing equipment
accounts for 52 percent of energy usage and
supply-side systems account for 48 percent.

Source: Emerson Network Power

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Cascade Effect of power savings

1-Watt savings at the server-component level creates a reduction in

facility energy consumption of approximately 2.84 Watts.
Source: Emerson Network Power
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Effective approaches for optimization

The most effective approaches to infrastructure optimization include:
Power management
Monitoring and optimization
DCIM - Data center infrastructure management
High efficiency power supplies
Low power processors
Server virtualizations
Cooling best practices
Supplemental cooling
Virtualization has had the largest impact on the Data Centers physical
infrastructure since the end of the Mainframe - Gartner 2013
Environmental Protection Agency concluded that best practices can
reduce data center energy consumption by 50 percent by 2011.
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Worldwide IT use electricity consumption

Source: ICT - Information and Communication Technologies

Worldwide use electricity consumption of communication

networks, personal computers and data centers.
ICT products and services in the total worldwide electricity
consumption has increased from about 4% in 2007 to 4.7% in 2012.

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What On-site technologies can we use

Current Power Technologies powering Data Centers:
Fuel cells eBay
Natural gas turbines Global Bank
Natural gas engines Technology Company
Micro-turbines Datagryd
Renewables for cells or turbines Microsoft
Other promising Applications:
- Biogas turbines more than 2500 installations
- Dual fuel generators Diesel and Natural gas
Source: The Data Centers, LLC (TDC)
http://www.thedatacenters.com/

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Onsite Clean Energy at Google

Headquarters

An array of Bloom Energy Server fuel cells

running on natural gas are providing the primary
power for the new eBay data center in Utah

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Top Data Centers stories

A blimp sponsored by Greenpeace flies over the
Facebook headquarters campus in Palo Alto,
California. Congratulating Apple, Facebook and
Google for their progress using renewable energy
in their data centers.
(Greenpeace)

Apple, Facebook and Google are

leading the shift to a greener
Internet, according to a new
report from Greenpeace.

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Reliability average-downtime/year
While no down-time is ideal, the tier system allows for unavailability of
services as listed below over a period of one year (525,600 minutes):

Tier 1 (99.671%) status would allow 1729.224 minutes or 28.8h

Tier 2 (99.741%) status would allow 1361.304 minutes or 22h
Tier 3 (99.982%) status would allow 94.608 minutes or 1.6h
Tier 4 (99.995%) status would allow 26.28 minutes or 0.44h

99.999% Reliability average, 5.3 minutes Non-availability per year

99.9999%, 32 seconds
99.99999%+, 3.2 seconds

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Power usage effectiveness (PUE)

UPS - Uninterruptible power supply
PDU - Power Distribution Systems

PUE was developed by a consortium

called The Green Grid.

Useful
Computing

The initial goal of PUE was to focus on

reducing loss and increasing efficiency
in the facility.

Total Facility Energy

PUE=
IT Equipment Energy
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What is PUE
PUE (power usage effectiveness) is a metric used to
determine the energy efficiency of a data center.
This is determined how much energy is used by the
computing equipment in contrast to cooling and other facility
overhead.
An ideal PUE is 1.0.
Anything that isnt considered a computing device in data
center (cooling, lighting, ) falls into the category of facility
energy consumption.

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Real-world data center PUE

The average data center in the US has a PUE of 2.0 ("Report to Congress
on Server and Data Center Energy Efficiency". U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency ENERGY STAR Program)
State-of-the-art data center energy efficiency is estimated to be roughly
1.2.("Data Center Energy Forecast". Silicon Valley Leadership Group)
Google reported that the companys average PUE for 2011 was 1.14.
Microsoft PUE for newest data centers range from 1.13 to 1.2
eBay announced a new data center that has a PUE of 1.35
Yahoo has designs that can deliver a PUE of 1.08

?
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FLOPS/Watt
Focus for speed paying attention to other criteria, consumed energy
Green500 list ranks according to FLOPS/Watt current Ranking (November 2013):
Measure how efficient a computer solves a dense system of linear equations
with floating point operations.
1. - TSUBAME-KFC, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 4.503,17MFLOPS/Watt,
TOP500 rank: 311, Japan
2. - WILKES, Cambridge University 3.631,86 MFLOPS/Watt,
TOP500 rank: 166, UK
3. - HA-PACS TCA, University of Tsukuba, 3.517,84 MFLOPS/Watt
TOP500 rank: 73, Japan
In fact only one supercomputer in both top tens
4. - Piz Daint, Swiss National Supercomputing Centre, 3.185,91 MFLOPS/Watt
TOP500 rank: 6, Switzerland.
Green500 position of fastest supercomputer
41. - Tianhe-2, Nat. Supercomputer center Guangzhou, 1.901,54 MFLOPS/Watt
TOP500 rank: 1, China
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Smart metering
Lord Kelvin: If you dont measure you cant improve.
Measurement of Electrical and non-electrical quantities

Infrared thermography (IRT), thermal

imaging, of data center room space can be
very useful for correction of air flow and
increase efficiency of cooling systems.
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Data Center Measurement System as a part of

Energy Monitoring and Demand Side Response of SEEU Campus

TR_01

TR_04

PV100

TR_02

TR_03

304

Communication net layer as infrastructure is above existing SEEU IT network.

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With the installation of smart meters at the SEEU

data center entry points , it is possible:
Monitoring of the consumption electricity
power
- Identification of peak loads (amount and time
of submission), distortions, .
Power Quality delivery from operators
The real time data and historical trends,
processing and analysis.
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Power Disturbances

Storm activity Lightning, wind, ice

Accidents, object coming in contact with power line
Utility fault clearing
Construction activity
Equipment failure
Overloading
Load switching
Non-Linear loads
Poor grounding
ESD - Electrostatic discharge
EMI - Electromagnetic interference
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Monitoring Power Quality (PQ)

Common Power Problems:

Power Failure a total loss of utility power

Power Sag short term low voltage
Power Surge short term high voltage above 110%
Under Voltage reduce line voltage for extended period of time
Over Voltage increased line voltage for extended period of time
Line Noise high frequency waveforms caused by RFI or EMI
Frequency variations change in frequency stability
Switching Transients in range of nanoseconds
Harmonic Distortion distortion of the normal voltage sinusoidal
waveform

Monitoring different Power Quality phenomena according to standards

such are:
- EN 50160
- IEEE 519-1992
- EN 61000-4-15 - flicker measurement
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Monitoring non-electrical but very important

quantities for data center
Running Hot!
- 27oC is an appropriate temp to run a data center per ASHRAE Standards
- Use of Air Economization / Free Cooling
Typical Rack Enclosure Mounted Server

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Expectation of project

Reduction of Energy Consumption

Getting beyond PUE
Power management, Power Quality monitoring and tracking
More efficient IT and the Power chain
Looking ahead at new possibilities and technologies
Create a comprehensive Energy Management Plan
Strategize on upgrades/changes to reach the goal

Integration of smart metering, information and communications

technology, Data centers becomes one step closer to smart grid
solution.
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Thank you for your attention!

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