Data Centre Power Trends
UKNOF 4 – 19th May 2006
Marcus Hopwood
Internet Facilitators Ltd
The bad news
Demand is up Price is up Oversupply is running out
The good news
Hardware manufacturers (finally) realise power is an issue
Energy policy high on government’s agenda IFL opening a new data centre
Demand is up
Demand is up
Average power per rack increasing Higher power servers Higher density deployments
High usage increasing faster Blade servers
Power usage in IFL data centres
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008
Am
ps
Rack average
High usage rack
Air cooling limit?
Typical customer usage
Power challenges
Available supply Limits on supply from grid Delay on increasing supply
Cooling the data centre Chilled air has maximum capacity Increasing use of water cooled racks
Price is up
DTI energy price review
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Q1
2004
Q2
2004
Q3
2004
Q4
2004
Q1
2005
Q2
2005
Q3
2005
Q4
2005
Pen
ce p
er k
Wh
Very Small
Small
Medium
Moderately Large
Large
Very Large
RPI (M. Large)
RPI (Large)
Supply problems
Electricity prices rising much faster than RPI Volatility in electricity supply marketplace High cost of new supplies Long lead time for new supplies
Real cost of electricity
Power at rack 10A 2.3kW
Losses (UPS etc)
1A 0.23kW
Cooling 3.6A 0.828kW
Total 14.6A 3.358kW
Real cost of electricity
4p 6p 8p
10A Rack £1176 £1765 £2353
Oversupply is running out
Oversupply running out
London data centres filling up IFL in Manchester full since October 2005 Telecity in Manchester full
Hardware manufacturers respond
HP
“Server and data center power management: Our work proposed temperature-aware scheduling, hardware-software co-ordination to enforce power budgets, and new blade designs for lower power. Our optimizations are individually successful in reducing system power by 20-50%.”
IBM
“The need for more performance from computer equipment in data centers has driven the power consumed to levels that are straining thermal management in the centers.”
Sun Microsystems
AMD
Intel
“Silicon and Platform Innovation—New materials, manufacturing techniques, and architectural approaches (such as multicore processors) will deliver substantial improvements in performance per watt over the next few years. This will enable ongoing increases in datacenter compute density, without driving up power and thermal requirements.”
Government energy policy
Why are electricity prices so high?
Generating capacity shortfall of 7-16GW by 2015
Equivalent to about 20% of current capacity Uncertainty about security of supply
Government agenda
Energy review due by end of July Nuclear power “back on the agenda with a
vengeance” (Tony Blair, 16th May 2006)
Possible price review
OFGEM consulted the market regarding price review
Initial decision that review not justified (but not ruled out)
Commitment to work with business to resolve issue
New data centre
Reynolds House
Additional 13,000 sq ft (gross) 2 MW power 200 watts / sq ft Average 15 – 20 Amps / rack (3.5 – 4.5 kW)
Top Related