Data Center Technology - Schneider Electric

Data Center Technology: 

Physical Infrastructure 

IT Trends Affecting New Technologies and Energy 

Efficiency Imperatives in the Data Center 

Hisham Elzahhar 

Regional Enterprise & System Manager, 

Schneider Electric IT business EMEA, Dubai

Keystrokes Kilowatts 

Heat OUT 

Electricity IN 

Schneider Electric - Division - Name – Date 

2

US Electrical Energy Sources 2006 

Other Renew ables 

Hydro-Electric 2% 

7% 

Nuclear 

19% 

Natural Gas 

20% 

Petroleum 

2% 

CoalCoal 

50% 

Coal 

Petroleum 

Natural Gas 

Nuclear 

Hydro-Electric 

Other Renewables 

Source US EIA 


3

Prime Electrical Source 


4

WHICH infrastructure? 

BUILDING 

infrastructure 

“Building systems” 

HVAC 

Electrical system 

Fire suppression 

Lighting 

Security 

BMS 

DATA CENTER 


Power 

Cooling 

Racks 

Management 

Lighting 


Physical security 

IT 


“IT assets” 

Servers, storage 

hypervisors, , NMS 

NETWORK 


Switches, cabling, 

routers 


5

WHICH infrastructure? 

Focus of this 

discussion 

BUILDING 


“Building systems” 

HVAC 

Electrical system 


Lighting 

Security 

BMS 

DATA CENTER 


Power 

Cooling 

Racks 

Management 

Lighting 


Physical security 

IT 


“IT assets” 

Servers, storage 

hypervisors, , NMS 

NETWORK 


Switches, cabling, 

routers 


6

Data center planning and operation 

is under increasing pressures 

Increasing availability 

Rapid changes in 

expectations 

IT technology 

Uncertain 

long-term plans for 

Energy and service 

capacity or density 

cost control pressure 

High density 

blade server 

power/heat 

Dynamic power 

variation 

Regulatory 

requirements 

Server 

consolidation 

In response, will need to change the way the 

world designs, installs, operates, manages, and 

maintains data centers 


7

The increasing power density 

of data centers 

Management challenge: 

HIGH DENSITY 

Power density of IT devices 

is leveling off… 

… but power density of data centers 

data centers 

continues to increase due to “packing” of 

high-density devices into smaller floor 

footprint 

2000 

2009 

KW per rack continues to increase, raising the need 

for management to keep things under control 


8

High density is stressing 

Management challenge: 

HIGH DENSITY 

power and cooling systems 

IT is getting boxed-in by limitations of 

power and cooling infrastructure 

● High density increases the risk of unpredictable cooling 

● Capacity is “tight” in some places, unused and unusable 

(“stranded”) in others 

● High density requires informed and efficient allocation of 

your expensive power/cooling resources 

● High density increases the need to know where new devices 

can be “squeezed in” to available capacities 


9

The Newest Challenge: EFFICIENCY 

Efficiency goal: 

Provide power and cooling in the amount needed, when needed, and 

where needed – but no more than what is required for redundancy 

and safety margins 

But we can’t manage what we can’t measure 


10

Datacenter Efficiency - DCiE 

Data center 

Power to 

data center 

Power path 

to IT 

POWER 

system 

Power 

to IT 

IT 

equipment 

Power to 

Secondary 

Support 

COOLING 

system 

Physical 

infrastructure* 

*To simplify the analysis, subsystems 

consuming a small amount of power 

are not included in this discussion: 

Cabling Physical security 

Switches Generator 

Lights Switchgear 

White 

paper 

113 

= 

Data Center infrastructure Efficiency 

Power 

to IT 

Power to 

data center 

( )% 


11

Datacenter Efficiency 

Data Center 

Physical Infrastructure 

IT 

COOLING 

COOLING 

system system 

POWER POWER 

system system 


12

Power Chain Losses 

4,930 barrels 

47 tons SO2 

16 tons N2O 

6,539 tons CO2 

Per mW/yr 

1mW 

DCiE @ 47% 

45 racks @ 10kW 


13

Inefficiencies Create Consumption 

● Computing inefficiencies > More servers 

● Server inefficiencies > More power and cooling 

● Power and cooling inefficiencies > More power consumption 

Inefficiencies drive both power consumption 

and material consumption 


14

Primary drivers of inefficiency 

● Oversizing of power and cooling equipment 

● Pushing cooling systems to cool densities higher than they were 

designed for 

● Ineffective room layout 

● Ineffective airflow patterns 

● Redundancy (for availability) 

● Inefficient power and cooling equipment 

● Inefficient operating settings of cooling equipment 

● Clogged air or water filters 

● Disabled or malfunctioning cooling economizer modes 

● Raised floor clogged with wires 


15

Efficiency: key reference points 

● More than 50% of the power going into a typical data center 

goes to the power and cooling systems – NOT to the IT loads 

● The typical 1MW (IT load) data center is continuously wasting 

about 400kW or 2,000 tons of coal per year due to poor design 

(DCiE = 50%, instead of best-practice 70%) 

● Every kW saved in a data center saves about $1,000 per year 

● Every kW saved in a data center reduces carbon dioxide 

emissions by 5 tons per year 

● Every kW saved in a data center has a carbon reduction 

equivalent to eliminating about 1 car from the road. 

● A 1% improvement in data center infrastructure efficiency (DCiE) 

corresponds to approximately 2% reduction in electrical bills 

References: APC White Paper 66 


16

Power tools for The Efficient Enterprise 


17

Power tools – The “Four Cs” 

1 

2 

omponents 

MODULAR and SCALABLE, with best-in-class EFFICIENCY 

lose-coupled cooling 

Placement of cooling units near the heat source 

3 

ontainment 

Thermal containment of airflow in high-density zones 

4 

apacity management 

Instrumented intelligence to optimize use of power and 

cooling capacity 


18

1 

omponents with the “right stuff” 

Best-in-class component EFFICIENCY 

Efficient 

Agile 

MODULAR SCALABLE component design 

Scalable 

External modularity 

Internal modularity 


19

Problem: Underloading 

Low loading = low efficiency 

In a traditional data center, over half the power consumption 

of the power/cooling infrastructure is fixed and does not go down 

when IT load goes down 

Efficiency degrades as IT load declines 

Underloading is a primary contributor to inefficiency 


Efficiency 

E ffic ie n c y 

100% 

90% 

80% 

70% 

60% 

50% 

40% 

30% 

20% 

10% 

0% 

Efficiency degrades at low loads 

Typical load range 

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 

% IT Load 

IT load 


20

Solution: Right-sizing 

Efficiency gain through modular scalable 

buildout – avoids oversizing / underloading 


Efficiency 

Efficiency 

100% 

90% 

80% 

70% 

60% 

50% 

40% 

30% 

20% 

10% 

0% 

Power and cooling 

installation method 

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 

% IT load Load 


21

Modular scalable design 

Reduce power consumption up to 30% by “right 

right-sizing 

sizing” 

power and cooling infrastructure 

● 

● 

Avoid underloading run more efficiently 

Pay only for what you need, when you need it 

P = Power C = Cooling R = Racks 


22

500kW of scalable, high-efficiency 

power protection 

100kW 125kW 150kW 175kW 200kW 225kW 250kW 275kW 300kW 325kW 350kW 375kW 400kW 425kW 450kW 500kW 475kW 


23

lose-coupled cooling 

Reduce power consumption up to 20% with InRow ® 

architecture 

● 

● 

● 

● 

Closely couples cooling with heat load, preventing exhaust air 

recirculation 

Less fan power than traditional raised-floor system 

Varying equipment temperatures are constantly held to set point 

conditions 

Lowers operating cost by monitoring inlet temperatures to modulate 

cooling capacity based on the cooling demand 

Fan speed adjusts to follow changing IT heat 

load 


24

Close-coupled cooling 

InRow ® air 

conditioner 

Heat captured and 

rejected to chilled water 

Cold air is supplied 

to the cold aisle 

Hot-aisle air enters from 

rear, preventing mixing 

Hot aisle 

Cold aisle 

Can operate on hard 

floor or raised floor 


25

Efficiency comparison 

100% 

90% 

Cooling Efficiency 

Cooling 

efficiency 

80% 

70% 

60% 

50% 

40% 

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 

IT load 

% IT Load 

Cooling efficiency = useful cooling power / (power consumed + useful cooling power) 


26

ontainment 

Eliminate expensive temperature cross-contamination 

contamination 

with thermal containment options 

● 

● 

● 

● 

Simplifies analysis and understanding 

of the thermal environment 

Increases predictability of the cooling 

system 

Increases cooling EFFICIENCY and 

cooling CAPACITY by returning warmest possible air to cooling 

units 

Ensures proper air distribution by 

separating supply and return air paths 

Hot Aisle Containment (HAC) 

Rack Air Containment (RAC) 


27

Rack Air Containment 

Rear 

Rear 

Containment 

● 

Rear containment prevents 

hot exhaust air from escaping 

InRow 

cooling 

unit 

InRow 

cooling 

unit 

● 

● 

● 

All exhaust air is returned to 

InRow ® cooling unit 

Optional front containment 

directs cool air to front of 

servers 

Allows up to 60 kW per rack 

(30 kW with N+1 redundancy) 

NetShelter SX 

rack 

Front 

Containment 

Front 

Top Down View 


28

Hot aisle containment vs traditional 

room cooling 

●Inherently higher power 

density capability than room 

designs 

●Fan power is reduced by 50% 

●Needless dehumidification / 

re-humidification is eliminated 

●Need for high-bay areas and 

raised floors is reduced or 

eliminated (particularly for small 

installations) 

●Cooling capacity can “follow” 

IT loads that move due to 

virtualization and server power 

management 

C o o l i n g E f f i c i e n c y 

100% 

90% 

80% 

70% 

60% 

50% 

40% 

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 

% IT Load 

Cooling efficiency = useful cooling power / 

(power consumed + useful cooling power) 


29

Hot Aisle Containment areas 

can be added as needed 


30

apacity Management 

Increase IT staff efficiency with predictable 

Capacity Management 

● 

● 

● 

Identify over- and under-utilized areas of your data 

center 

Minimize waste and human error 

via predictable software monitoring, sensing, and 

environmental control 

Quickly adapt to change with 

real-time data on what to power 

and where to cool 


31

Capacity Manager 

Physical equipment 

provisioning 

Quickly locate the optimum spot 

for that next server based on 

space, cooling, and power needs 

Rack elevations 

Easy-to-use front view for 

accurate and detailed 

representation of equipment 

layout 

Airflow analysis 

Locate new devices without 

overheating new or existing 

equipment by simulating 

changes in; supply 

temperature, airflow and 

number of cooling units 

Available capacity 

Understand available capacity by 

calculating actual space, power 

and cooling consumption against 

data center architecture 

constraints 

Capacity grouping 

Specify architecture 

capabilities to; match IT 

equipment with availability 

needs ad avoid stranded 

space, power and cooling 

capacity 

Design analysis 

Model the effects of and 

compare alternative layouts 

through detailed design 

analysis 


32

Capacity and energy 

management 

●Poor utilization of capacity is a 

primary cause of inefficiency 

●Software can identify available 

capacity (even by rack) and 

help prevent creation of 

stranded capacity 

●Side effect is you can fit more 

IT equipment in the power and 

cooling “envelope” of the data 

center 

●Energy management can 

identify efficiency improvement 

opportunities 

Infrastructure Central Software 

With Capacity Manager 


33

Power consumptions compared to the 

IT load 

IT Load 

Aux Devices 

Lights 

Humidifier 

Chiller 

Pumps 

Heat Rejection 

CRAC 

Distribution Wiring 

Switchgear 

Generator 

Improving efficiency 

means working to 

reduce power 

consumption (increase 

efficiency) for each of 

these device categories 

PDU 

UPS 

Reference: APC White Paper 114 

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 120% 

Power 

Power 

consumption 

Consumption 

as 

as 

% of 

% 

the 

of IT 

IT 

Load 

load 

0.0% 20.0% 40.0% 60.0% 80.0% 100.0% 120.0% 

Data for a typical tier 4 data center operating at 30% of rated load 


34

Drivers of infrastructure efficiency gains 

(Baseline: Average of existing installed base) 

IMPROVEMENT Device Gain DCiE Gain 

$$ saved over 15 

years in a 1MW data 

center** 

Move from room cooling to 

dynamic row/rack cooling 

70% 8% $5,900,000 

Cooling economizers 38% 4% $2,500,000 

Right-sizing through modular 

power and cooling equipment 

4% 4% $2,400,000 

Higher UPS efficiency 8% 4% $1,900,000 

415/240 V transformerless 

power distribution (NAM)* 

Dynamic control of cooling 

plant (VFD fans, pumps, 

chillers) 

4% 2.5% $1,500,000 

25% 2.5% $1,200,000 

TOTAL to get industry 

from 47% to 72% DCiE 25% 

25% $14,700,000 

*No benefit outside of NAM; Transformer based PDUs typically in NAM only 

**$$ values based on $.15 per kwh electric cost, starting DCiE of 47%, ave density 8KW/rack 


35

Power Chain Losses – Could Be 

4,930 barrels 


47 tons SO2 

16 tons N2O 

Per mW/yr 

1,971 barrels 


19 tons SO2 

6 tons N2O 

1mW 

400kW 

DCiE @ 70% 


36

Visit us 

Hall 4, booth 4405 

(next to the BP Carbon Theater) 

Tour the booth and be entered into our daily lottery 

The lucky winner to receive a brand new 

Amazon Kindle e-reading device right away! 


37

Questions? 


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Data Center Technology - Schneider Electric

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