Green Data Center Program (short version:-)

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Green Data Center Program(short version-)

• Alan Crosswell

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Agenda

• The CUIT Data Center
• Greening the Data Center
• Future Goals
• Our NYSERDA Advanced Concepts Datacenter proposal
• Next Steps

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CUIT Data Center

• Old, but has good bones.
• Electrical distribution is inefficient.
• Cooling systems are old our practices are
  inefficient.
• Older, inefficient servers.
• One of many server rooms.

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CUIT Data Center
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LBNL Average PUE for 12 Data Centers
Power Use Efficiency (PUE) 2.17
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Making the server slice bigger, the pie smaller
and green.

• Reduce the PUE ratio by improving electrical
  mechanical efficiency.
• Google claims a PUE of 1.2
• Consolidate data centers (server rooms)
• Claimed more efficient when larger (prove it!)
• Free up valuable space for wet labs, offices,
  classrooms.
• Reduce the overall IT load through
• Server efficiency (newer, more efficient
  hardware)
• Server consolidation sharing
• Virtualization
• Shared research clusters
• Move servers to a zero-carbon data center

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Data center green power best practices

• Locate data center near a renewable source
• Hydroelectric power in Canada
• Wind power but most wind farms lack
  transmission capacity.
• 40 of power is lost in transmission. So bring
  the servers to the power.
• Leverages our international high speed data
  networks
• Use free cooling (outside air)
• Stanford proposal will free cool almost always
• Implement follow the Sun data centers
• Move the compute load to wherever the greenest
  power is currently available.

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Barriers to implementing best practices

• Capital costs
• Short-term and parochial thinking
• Saving electricity is not well incented as nobody
  is billed for their electrical use.
• Distance
• Some technical issues as well as
• Reliability concerns
• Server hugging
• Staffing needs

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Future State Goals Next 5 years

• Begin phased upgrades of the Data Center to
  Improve power and space efficiency. Overall cost
  20M.
• Consolidate and replace pizza box servers with
  blades ( virtualization).
• Consolidate and simplify storage systems.
• Accommodate growing demand for HPC research
  clusters
• Share clusters among researchers to be more
  efficient
• Accommodate server needs of new Interdisciplinary
  Science Building.
• Develop internal cloud services.
• Explore external cloud services.
• Stanford giving Amazon EC2 credits for faculty
  startup

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Future State Goals Next 5-10 years

• Build a new data center of 10,000-15,000 sf
• Perhaps cooperatively with others
• Not necessarily in NYC
• Possibly in Manhattanville
• Consolidate many small server rooms.
• Significant use of green-energy cloud computing
  resources.

From www.jiminypeak.com
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Our NYSERDA Grant

• New York State Energy Research Development
  Authority Program Opportunity Notice 1206
• 1.2M (447K from NYSERDA awarded pending
  contract)?
• Improve space power efficiency of primarily
  administrative servers. (N.B. Cyrus savings)
• Contribute to Columbia's PlaNYC carbon footprint
  reduction goal.
• Make room for shared research computing in the
  existing data center.
• Measure and test vendor claims of energy
  efficiency improvements.
• Communicate results.

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Next Steps Beyond the NYSERDA Grant

• Develop a shovel ready plan to continue moving
  forward.
• Includes Server Storage replacement strategy
• Identify funding needs and opportunities
• ISB Servers
• Manhattanville Phase 1 Servers
• Shared research cluster expansion
• Possible grants
• NIH Extramural Research Facilities and
  Improvement Program (1-10M)
• DoE Information and Communication Facility Energy
  Efficiency (to be announced this month)
• Additional forthcoming stimulus (ARRA) grants

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Thanks

• CU Facilities Steve Poller, Frank Mastromauro,
  Dave Carlson, Dominick Chirico, Clem Olivio,
  Frank Martin, Wil Elmes, Matt Early, Dave Forbes,
  Geoff Wiener, Joe Ienuso, Joe Mannino, Fran
  Fitzgerald, Frances Huppert, David Greenberg
• Office of the EVP for Research Greg Culler,
  Victoria Hamilton, David Hirsh, Marie Tracy,
  Patty Valencia-Ferguson, Mario Reyes
• Bruns-Pak, Dell, HP, IBM
• NYSERNet Bob Bloom, Tim Lance
• NYSERDA Joe Borowiec
• CUIT/SAS Halayn Hescock, Rich Hall, Victor
  Warren, Ryan Abrecea, Tony Cirillo, all of
  Systems Network Engineering, Candy Fleming,
  Donna Sadlon, Jeff Scott, John Milnes
• External visiting committee Marilyn McMillan
  (NYU), Vace Kundakci (CCNY), Lauri Kerr (NYC),
  Tim Lance (NYSERNet),
• Internal advisory group Wil Elmes, Art Langer,
  Nilda Mesa, Scott Norum, Len Peters
• Research faculty user group Liam Paninski, Lei
  Cong, Greg Bryan, Kathryn Johnston, Mary Putman
• This work is supported in part by the New York
  State Energy Research and Development Authority.