Data centers consume 3-5% of the world's electricity, and in some countries, such as China, this figure reaches 7%. Data centers need electricity 24/7 to keep their equipment running smoothly. As a result, the operation of the data center provokes greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, and in terms of the level of negative impact on the environment, they can be compared with air travel. We collected the latest research to find out how data centers affect the environment, whether it can be changed and whether there are similar initiatives in Russia.
According to the latter at Supermicro, eco-conscious data centers implementing green solutions could reduce their environmental impact by 80%. And the saved electricity is to keep all Las Vegas casinos lit for 37 years. But at the moment, only 12% of the world's data centers can be called "green".
based on a survey of 5000 representatives of the IT industry. It turned out that 86% of respondents in general do not think about the impact of data centers on the environment. And only 15% of data center managers care about social responsibility and assessing the energy efficiency of an enterprise. In general, the industry is focusing on goals related to ensuring fault tolerance of operation, rather than energy efficiency. Although it is beneficial for data centers to focus on the latter: the average enterprise can save up to $38 million on energy resources.
CPUE
PUE (Power Utilization Efficiency) is a metric for evaluating the energy efficiency of a data center. The measure was approved by members of The Green Grid consortium in 2007. PUE reflects the ratio of the electrical energy consumed by the data center to the energy that is consumed directly by the data center equipment. So, if the data center receives 10 MW of power from the network, and all equipment βkeepsβ at 5 MW, the PUE indicator will be 2. If the βgapβ in the readings decreases, and most of the electricity reaches the equipment, the coefficient will tend to the ideal indicator is one.
In the August report of the Global Data Center Survey from the Uptime Institute (among respondents - 900 data center operators), the average global PUE ratio at the level of 1,59. Overall, the rate has fluctuated at this level since 2013. For comparison, in 2013 the PUE was 1,65, in 2018 it was 1, and in 58 it was 2019.
While the PUE score is not fair enough to compare different data centers and geographies, Uptime Institute compiles such comparison tables.
The comparison is unfair due to the fact that some data centers are in the worst climatic conditions. So, to cool a conditional data center in Africa, you need much more electricity than a data center located in northern Europe.
Logically, the most energy inefficient data centers are in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and parts of the Asia-Pacific region. Europe and the region uniting the USA and Canada became the most "exemplary" in terms of PUE. By the way, there are more respondents in these countries - 95 and 92 data center providers, respectively.
The study also evaluated data centers in Russia and the CIS countries. True, only 9 respondents took part in the survey. PUE of domestic and "neighboring" data centers was 1,6.
How to lower PUE
Natural cooling
According to , about 40% of all energy consumed by data centers goes to the operation of artificial cooling systems. The implementation of free cooling (free-cooling) helps to significantly reduce costs. With such a system, the outside air is filtered, heated or cooled, after which it is fed into the server rooms. "Exhausted" hot air is thrown out or partially mixed, if necessary, with the incoming flow.
In the case of freecooling, the climate is of great importance. The more the outdoor air temperature is suitable for the data center hall, the less energy is needed to bring it to the desired βconditionβ.
In addition, the data center can be located near a reservoir - in this case, the water from it can be used to cool the data center. By the way, according to Stratistics MRC forecasts, by 2023 the market value of liquid cooling technologies will reach $4,55 billion. Among its types are immersion cooling (immersion of equipment in immersion oil), adiabatic cooling (based on evaporation technology, used in the Facebook data center) , heat exchanger (the coolant of the required temperature comes directly to the equipment rack, removing excess heat).
Monitoring and timely replacement of equipment
The correct use of the capacities available in the data center will also help improve energy efficiency. Already purchased servers must either work for the tasks of clients, or do not consume energy during downtime. One way to control the situation is to use infrastructure management software. For example, the Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) system. Such software automatically redistributes the load on servers, shuts down idle devices and makes recommendations on the speed of the fans of refrigeration units (again, to save energy from excessive cooling).
An important part of improving the energy efficiency of a data center is the timely updating of equipment. An outdated server is most often inferior in performance and resource intensity to a new generation. Therefore, in order to lower the PUE, it is recommended to update the equipment as often as possible - some companies do this every year. From Supermicro research: Optimized hardware refresh cycles can reduce e-waste by more than 80% and improve data center performance by 15%.
There are also ways to optimize the data center ecosystem without significant costs. So, you can close gaps in server cabinets to prevent cold air leaks, isolate hot or cold aisles, move a highly loaded server to a colder part of the data center, and so on.
Fewer physical servers - more virtual machines
VMware has calculated that moving to virtual servers reduces power consumption by 80% in some cases. This is because putting more virtual servers on fewer physical machines logically reduces hardware maintenance, cooling, and power costs.
companies NRDC and Anthesis showed that replacing 3 servers with 000 virtual machines saves $ 150 million on electricity.
Among other things, virtualization makes it possible to reallocate and grow virtual resources (processors, memory, storage) in the process. Therefore, electricity is only used to ensure operation, excluding the cost of idle equipment.
Of course, alternative energy sources can also be chosen to improve energy efficiency. To do this, some data centers use solar panels and wind generators. These are, however, rather expensive projects that only large companies can afford.
Greens in practice
Number of data centers in the world from 500 in 000 to over 2012 million. Their electricity consumption figures are doubling every four years. The generation of electricity needed by data centers is directly related to the amount of carbon emissions that result from the combustion of fossil fuels.
Scientists from the Open University of Great Britain that data centers produce 2% of the world's CO2 emissions. This is about the same as the largest airlines in the world. In 2019, power plants emitted 44 million tons of COβ to power 2018 data centers in China, according to a 99 GreenPeace study.
Major world leaders such as Apple, Google, Facebook, Akamai, Microsoft take responsibility for the negative impact on nature and try to reduce it using "green" technologies. So, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella spoke about the company's intention to achieve a negative level of carbon emissions by 2030, and by 2050 completely eliminate the consequences of emissions since the company was founded in 1975.
These business giants, however, have enough resources to implement plans. In the text, we will mention several less well-known βgreeningβ data centers.
Kolos
The data center, located in the municipality of Ballengen (Norway), positions itself as a data center operating on 100% renewable energy. So, to ensure the operation of the equipment, water is used to cool the servers, water and wind power generators. By 2027, the data center plans to go beyond 1000 MW of electrical capacity. Now Kolos saves 60% of electricity.
Next Generation Data
The British data center serves companies such as the telecommunications holding BT Group, IBM, Logica and others. In 2014, NGD claimed to have achieved its ideal PUE of one. Solar panels located on the roof of the data center brought closer to the maximum energy efficiency of the data center. However, then experts questioned the somewhat utopian result.
Swiss Fort Knox
This data center is a kind of loft project. The data center "grew" on the site of an old Cold War bunker built by the Swiss military in case of a nuclear conflict. In addition to the fact that the data center, in fact, does not take up space on the surface of the planet, it also uses glacial water from an underground lake in cooling systems. Thanks to this, the temperature of the cooling system is kept at 8 degrees Celsius.
Equinix AM3
The data center, located in Amsterdam, uses Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage cooling towers in its infrastructure. Their cool air lowers the temperature of the hot corridors. In addition, liquid cooling systems are used in the data center, and the waste heated water is used to heat the University of Amsterdam.
What is in Russia
Research CNews revealed an increase in the number of racks at the largest Russian data center service providers. In 2019, the growth was 10% (up to 36,5 thousand), and in 2020 the number of racks may increase by another 20%. Data center providers promise to set a record and provide customers with 6961 more racks this year.
On CNews, the energy efficiency of the applied solutions and equipment to ensure the operability of the data center is at a very low level - 1 W of useful power accounts for up to 50% of non-production costs.
However, Russian data centers are motivated to reduce PUE. However, the engine of progress for many providers is not environmental protection and social responsibility, but economic benefits. An irrational approach to energy consumption costs money.
At the state level, there are no environmental standards regarding the operation of the data center, as well as any economic incentives for those who implement "green" initiatives. Therefore, in Russia it is still the personal responsibility of data centers.
The most common ways to demonstrate the eco-consciousness of domestic data centers:
- Transition to more energy-efficient methods of equipment cooling (free-cooling and liquid cooling systems);
- Disposal of equipment and indirect waste of data centers;
- Compensation for the negative impact of data centers on nature through participation in environmental campaigns and investing in eco-projects.
Kirill Malevanov, Technical Director, Selectel
Today, the PUE of Selectel data centers is 1,25 (Dubrovka DC in the Leningrad Region) and 1,15-1,20 (Berzarina-2 DC in Moscow). We monitor the ratio and strive to use more energy efficient solutions for cooling, lighting and other aspects of work. Modern servers now consume approximately the same amount of energy, it makes no sense to go to extremes and fight for 10W. However, in terms of equipment that ensures the operation of data centers, the approach is changing - we are also looking at energy efficiency indicators.
If we talk about recycling, here Selectel has entered into agreements with several companies involved in the recycling of equipment. Not only servers are sent to the scrap, but also many other things: batteries from uninterruptible power supplies, ethylene glycol from cooling systems. We collect and recycle even waste paper - packaging material from equipment that comes to our data centers.
SeleΡtel went further and launched the Green Selectel program. Now the company will plant one tree annually for each server running in the company's data centers. The company carried out the first mass planting of forests on September 19 - in the Moscow and Leningrad regions. In total, 20 trees were planted, which in the future will be able to produce up to 000 liters of oxygen per year. The actions will not end there, the plans are to implement "green" initiatives throughout the year. You can find out about new promotions on the website. and .
Source: habr.com