In news today, Google are setting up a deal to digitise thousands of books so that they are available to download from the Internet for users worldwide. At present the deal is only being agreed for the United States, but is expected to be expanded across the globe. Many see this as a positive step as it will make books more accessible and safe-guard books from going out of print in the future, as well as re-releasing out of print books on the Internet. Others view the move as a potential future monopoly on all digitised books, which may well have significant repercussions on the future of publishing.
From an environmental perspective there are many pros and cons on both sides of the argument.
At present, it takes roughly 43 trees to make 1000, 1lb books, using the pulping process. This does not take into account the manufacturing process and how much carbon this consumes, along with delivery and marketing. Eco-libris.net suggest that each book requires 1.3 trees to be planted to make the process carbon neutral. But how much carbon would be used to scan and store the number of books being suggested by google?
It is highly recognised that data centres are one of the biggest producers of CO2 in the world. To run a 1MW data centre for 1 year, you would produce over 8,300 tonnes of CO2, and that doesn't include staff or production and destruction of equipment. The amount of trees required to make that 1MW data centre carbon neutral would approach 17,000 every year (or 395,000 1lb books!).
Google are very conscious of their carbon footprint, whether it is for ethical or economic reasons. They are constantly recording PUEs of 1.21, and have measured one data centre as low as 1.15. With this in mind, how many forests are Google plating to offset its digitisation of millions of books?
Showing posts with label DCiE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DCiE. Show all posts
Thursday, 30 April 2009
Wednesday, 8 April 2009
Metering the Data Centre
PUE, DCiE, what’s it all about? PUE is a metric developed by The Green Grid to measure Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE); DCiE (Data Centre infrastructure Efficiency) is simply the inverse of PUE reported as a percentage. OK, so now we are in recession. There are, and will be more, calls for spending cuts and more efficiency from existing hardware and our staff. PUE and DCiE can play an important part in this.
But where to start? As we are talking data centres, look at the power consumption. Or more accurately, look to see if you can look at the power consumption. It is amazing how many data centres and computer rooms, even the new builds don’t have metering installed to monitor power consumption. Data centres are estimated to contribute 3% of the CO2 emissions globally, yet the vast majority of data centre managers have no idea how much energy their facility consumes – let alone where to start making savings.
How do you get on with your company’s Facilities Manager? Ok, putting that aside, it’s imperative that there is a good working relationship between these vastly important departments (IT and Facilities) as these two hold the key to reducing energy consumption, and therefore costs, more than any other department.
Look at it from the Facility’s Managers point of view. He has little if any impact on what is installed in the data centre. All he or she will see is the monthly or quarterly electricity bills coming in with little idea of where to reduce costs, or indeed, where the costs are coming from. Keeping him/her in the picture is incredibly important.
With metering installed a whole range of other opportunities for savings is opened up. Chargeback for example. Facilities charge IT for power used, IT charge the business, whether on an application basic or per U basis. The method can be agreed, the important thing is that metering opens the doors to making the whole business aware of the true cost of powering the data centre. Metering at the rack or server level isn’t necessarily needed. That’s an additional expense and an overhead to monitor. Although it would be great, keep it simple to start.
Working together to install electricity meters to enable the PUE and DCiE to be calculated and logged on a regular basis is a start. It is also imperative to log your consumption regularly by taking meter readings and trending the power usage, what impacts it and what changes it.
How much will you save by installing these meters? Without proper metering, who knows?
Migration Solutions is a specialist computer room and data centre specialist offering independent advice on the design, build and operation of data centres and computer rooms. See our website at www.migrationsolutions.com, or email us at info@migrationsolutions.com.
But where to start? As we are talking data centres, look at the power consumption. Or more accurately, look to see if you can look at the power consumption. It is amazing how many data centres and computer rooms, even the new builds don’t have metering installed to monitor power consumption. Data centres are estimated to contribute 3% of the CO2 emissions globally, yet the vast majority of data centre managers have no idea how much energy their facility consumes – let alone where to start making savings.
How do you get on with your company’s Facilities Manager? Ok, putting that aside, it’s imperative that there is a good working relationship between these vastly important departments (IT and Facilities) as these two hold the key to reducing energy consumption, and therefore costs, more than any other department.
Look at it from the Facility’s Managers point of view. He has little if any impact on what is installed in the data centre. All he or she will see is the monthly or quarterly electricity bills coming in with little idea of where to reduce costs, or indeed, where the costs are coming from. Keeping him/her in the picture is incredibly important.
With metering installed a whole range of other opportunities for savings is opened up. Chargeback for example. Facilities charge IT for power used, IT charge the business, whether on an application basic or per U basis. The method can be agreed, the important thing is that metering opens the doors to making the whole business aware of the true cost of powering the data centre. Metering at the rack or server level isn’t necessarily needed. That’s an additional expense and an overhead to monitor. Although it would be great, keep it simple to start.
Working together to install electricity meters to enable the PUE and DCiE to be calculated and logged on a regular basis is a start. It is also imperative to log your consumption regularly by taking meter readings and trending the power usage, what impacts it and what changes it.
How much will you save by installing these meters? Without proper metering, who knows?
Migration Solutions is a specialist computer room and data centre specialist offering independent advice on the design, build and operation of data centres and computer rooms. See our website at www.migrationsolutions.com, or email us at info@migrationsolutions.com.
Monday, 23 February 2009
PUE, DCiE, what’s it all about?
PUE is a metric developed by The Green Grid to measure Power Usage Effectiveness, which compares the total facility power usage against the IT power load. DCiE (Data Centre infrastructure Efficiency) is simply the inverse of PUE reported as a percentage. What do these figures actually tell us? They give a snap shot in time of a data centre or computer room's power use which can be used to suggest how efficiently your data centre's plant equipment is running. One of the main problems with PUE and DCiE is that the results tend to vary depending on the weather conditions at that particular moment in time. For example, if you took PUE measurements at 6am and again at 2pm, the difference in outside temperature and humidity would affect how hard your plant would have to work. A higher outside temperature requires air conditioning chillers to work harder to cool the same load, which has a significant impact on power usage. To make effective use of PUE and DCiE, reading need to be taken regularly to get an averaged result.
OK, so now we are in recession. There are, and will be more, calls for spending cuts and more efficiency from existing hardware and our staff. PUE and DCiE can play an important part in this. But where to start? As we are talking data centres, look at the power consumption. Or more accurately, look to see if you can look at the power consumption. It is amazing how many data centres and computer rooms, even the new builds don’t have metering installed to monitor power consumption. Data centres are estimated to contribute 3% of the CO2 emissions globally, yet the vast majority of data centre managers have no idea how much energy their facility consumes – let alone where to start making savings.
How do you get on with your company’s Facilities Manager? Putting that aside, it’s imperative that there is a good working relationship between these vastly important departments (IT and Facilities) as these two hold the key to reducing energy consumption, and therefore costs, more than any other department. Look at it from the Facility’s Managers point of view. He has little if any impact on what is installed in the data centre. All he or she will see is the monthly or quarterly electricity bills coming in with little idea of where to reduce costs, or indeed, where the costs are coming from. Keeping him/her in the picture is incredibly important. Working together to install electricity meters to enable the PUE and DCiE to be calculated and logged on a regular basis is a start. It is also imperative to log your consumption regularly by taking meter readings and trending the power usage, what impacts it and what changes it.
How much will you save by installing this meters? Without proper metering, who knows?
Migration Solutions is a member of The Green Grid which is focused on advancing efficiency in data centres. They have also recently received Information Age's award for Best Data Centre Innovation 2008 for ERA - an Environmental Report and Audit which aims to help data centre owners to save money and the environment with no or little financial outlay.
OK, so now we are in recession. There are, and will be more, calls for spending cuts and more efficiency from existing hardware and our staff. PUE and DCiE can play an important part in this. But where to start? As we are talking data centres, look at the power consumption. Or more accurately, look to see if you can look at the power consumption. It is amazing how many data centres and computer rooms, even the new builds don’t have metering installed to monitor power consumption. Data centres are estimated to contribute 3% of the CO2 emissions globally, yet the vast majority of data centre managers have no idea how much energy their facility consumes – let alone where to start making savings.
How do you get on with your company’s Facilities Manager? Putting that aside, it’s imperative that there is a good working relationship between these vastly important departments (IT and Facilities) as these two hold the key to reducing energy consumption, and therefore costs, more than any other department. Look at it from the Facility’s Managers point of view. He has little if any impact on what is installed in the data centre. All he or she will see is the monthly or quarterly electricity bills coming in with little idea of where to reduce costs, or indeed, where the costs are coming from. Keeping him/her in the picture is incredibly important. Working together to install electricity meters to enable the PUE and DCiE to be calculated and logged on a regular basis is a start. It is also imperative to log your consumption regularly by taking meter readings and trending the power usage, what impacts it and what changes it.
How much will you save by installing this meters? Without proper metering, who knows?
Migration Solutions is a member of The Green Grid which is focused on advancing efficiency in data centres. They have also recently received Information Age's award for Best Data Centre Innovation 2008 for ERA - an Environmental Report and Audit which aims to help data centre owners to save money and the environment with no or little financial outlay.
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