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6 February 2015 by Laura Luo -
Delta data center in
Shanghai
Delta CIO Yikuan Li shows us his Shanghai data center
The Chinese government has directed data
centers to reduce their PUE. Datacenter
Dynamics spoke to a power management expert
which used multiple cooling technologies and
DC power supplies to bring its Shanghai facility
up to scratch.
With more and more Chinese consumers using
smartphones, tablets, and other smart devices,
more and more data centers are being built for
meeting their growing demand for data storage,
processing and transmission.
However, data centers are energy-intensive. It is estimated that data
centers currently account for about 3 percent of global energy consumption.
Data centers in the five year plan
To alleviate the dual pressure of power
supply and environmental degradation,
China’s Ministry of Industry and
Information Technology (MIIT) is
demanding more efficiency. The country's
twelfth Five-Year Plan includes an energy
saving aspect which demands that data centers in China shall decrease
their power usage efficiency (PUE) by 8 percent by 2015.
MIIT has also issued guidelines for data center location, together with four
other Ministries, and there are incentives to improve. Newly built data
centers with a PUE lower than 1.5, as well as revamped facilities achieving
a PUE of lower than 2.0 are eligible for preferential policies in terms of
power infrastructure construction, power supply and other supported
services.
Data center energy efficiency directly affects the costs of data center
owners, operators and users in China, and it is also a key priority at the
government level in the country. In response, data center vendors have
rolled out energy-efficient solutions to address this concern.
Power management firm Delta launched a data center product line in 2008,
and since then the company has been building energy-efficient data centers
for data center customers. But how faqr does it trust its own products? Is it
using them itselft- and getting the benefits it promises to its customers?
Datacenter Dynamics visited Delta's own data center, hosted in the
company's Shanghai site and interviewed Yikuan Li, the chief information
officer (CIO) of Delta GreenTech China to explore Delta’s approach to build
highly energy-efficient data centers.
Planning and selection
Mr Li believes highly energy-efficient data
centers involves sophisticated planning in
site selection, construction, operation and
maintenance, among others.
It starts with picking a location: "When
famous IT giants such as Google and
Microsoft source sites for large data
centers, they will firstly evaluate whether
they can get good investment returns
from the energy efficiency perspective
from such sites. If they choose to build
data centers in places which are very hot
and can’t ensure reliable power and water
resources supplies, important energy
efficiency indexes will all suffer,” he told Datacenter Dynamics.
Oversizing is another common cause for high energy consumption of data
centers. “For instance, while designing a data center of 20 racks, the
planning staff may reserve space for another six or seven racks to
accommodate future business development. However, with constant
improvement of server performance, and growing application of new
technologies such as virtualization and cloud computing, most data centers
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are still oversized, which may lead to the requirement of cooling areas
without IT equipment, hence causing more energy consumption,” Mr Li
explained.
Raising operational temperature is also a hot topic discussed by data
center professionals for enhancing energy efficiency. Since the ASHRAE
9.9 Technical Committee rolled out new thermal guidelines for operating
data centers, many data center operators began to raise operating
temperature to save energy. Mr Li said this is also one of the key factors to
be taken into account for enhancing energy efficiency.
“Servers in traditional data centers operates at 18~22℃. This is too low
from the technology development perspective. It's like turning on an air
conditioner in summer, if the temperature is set at 18℃, compressors will
keep on running with high workloads, which results in high energy
consumption. Practical experience tells us that highly efficient data centers,
including data centers deployed in high density, can operate at 25~27℃
without compromising safety. Raising operating temperature can help to
reduce energy consumption, the cooling energy consumption in particular.”
High voltage direct current
He also points out the power supply and
distribution system has remarkable
impact on data center energy efficiency:
"Though some data centers have
invested money and time to deploy
precision air conditioning units and
variable-frequency compressors, they are
still using traditional UPS systems with
low efficiency; if such inefficient UPSs are replaced with highly efficient
ones(94 to 95 percent), unnecessary power consumption in power supply
and distribution can be avoided."
Mr Li is optimistic about the efficiency benefits brought about by high
voltage direct current (HVDC) technology. As servers are replaced faster
than before, they can have good compatibility with HVDC technology.
"Currently, three major domestic telecommunication operators have
deployed HVDC in their large cloud data centers, which helped to enhance
energy efficiency in power supply and distribution systems,” he added.
As a green data center solution provider, Delta has been committed to
building energy-efficient data centers for itself to support the development
of its own business.
Delta has R&D centers and manufacturing plants in mainland China,
Taiwan, the United States, Thailand, Japan, Singapore, Mexico, India,
Brazil and Europe. To support the development of its global business, the
group has built data centers across the world by using its own data center
solutions.
Delta's in-house learning
Within the Greater China region, Delta operates data centers in Shanghai in
East China, Dongguan in South China, and Taipei in Taiwan. Such facilities
are mainly used to support the operation of internal ERP systems, mail
systems, network systems, file systems, among others.
Within such data centers, Delta utilizes many energy-saving measures
including energy-efficient modular UPS, hot and cold aisle containment,
racks with high perforation rate, variable fan speed control system, chiller
systems. In addition, free cooling can be introduced in accordance with
local weather conditions.
The data center hosted within Delta’s Shanghai Operation Center is a
medium-sized one among all the facilities owned by the Group. It runs 132
servers and hosts 250 kinds of applications including business automation,
ERP systems, mail systems, document services, conferencing systems and
telephone systems for supporting internal business operations.
In 2012, Delta Group revamped the Shanghai facility by deploying its own
InfraSuite data center solution, which integrates cabinets, in-row air
conditioners, monitoring software, and power supply and distribution
systems.
Mr Li said the biggest highlight of the renovated facility is its ability to switch
automatically among three cooling systems—heat exchangers (free
cooling) , air-cooled systems and chilled water systems in accordance with
environmental conditions, a mechanism which makes the facility more
efficient.
Pick the best cooling
"When the outdoor temperature is less than 18℃, heat exchangers will be
enabled automatically; when the temperature stays at 18~30℃, air-based
cooling systems will be used; and when the temperature reaches 30℃,
water-based cooling system will take over all the workloads. The three
cooling systems offer redundancy for each other—air-based systems offer
redundancy for heat exchangers, and water-based systems offers
redundancy for air-based cooling systems.”
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