On building next generation data centers: energy flow in the information technology stack

ABSTRACT

The demand for data center solutions with lower total cost of ownership and lower complexity of management is driving the creation of next generation datacenters The information technology industry is in the midst of a transformation to lower the cost of operation through consolidation and better utilization of critical data center resources. Successful consolidation necessitates increasing utilization of capital intensive "always-on" data center infrastructure, and reducing the recurring cost of power. A need exists, therefore for an end to end methodology that can be used to design and manage dense data centers and determine the cost of operating a data center.

The chip core to the cooling tower model must capture the power levels and thermo-fluids behavior of chips, systems, aggregation of systems in racks, rows of racks, room flow distribution, air conditioning equipment, hydronics, vapor compression systems, pumps and heat exchangers. Earlier work has outlined the foundation for creation of a "smart" data center through use of flexible cooling resources and a distributed sensing and control system that can provision the cooling resources based on the need. This paper shows a common platform which serves as an evaluation and basis for policy based control engine for such a "smart" data center with much broader reach -- from chip core to the cooling tower. In this paper, we propose a data center solution, which has three components: Cooling, Power and Compute. These three components collectively improve efficiency and manageability of the data center by supporting greater compaction, flexible building blocks that can be dynamically configured, dynamic optimization, better monitoring and visualization, and policy-based control. Coefficient of performance (COP) of the ensemble is defined that represents an overall measure of the efficiency of performance of energy flow during the operation of a data center.

REFERENCES

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.4 PERFORMANCE OF SYSTEMS

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.2 Design Tools and Techniques

General Terms:
Design, Economics, Experimentation, Management, Measurement, Reliability

Keywords:
data center management, energy efficiency, smart cooling, smart data center, sustainability