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 If you receive Mission Critical
in the mail each month, it's time for your annual renewal. If you're not currently receiving Mission Critical sign up today! Click on this link Subscribe to Mission Critical to answer a few quick questions and receive your free subscription.
Note: regardless of when you last renewed or when you first started receiving your FREE subscription, you must confirm that you wish to continue receiving Mission Critical each year.
 To continue to receive your
complimentary copy of
Mission Critical enewsletter, please visit these links.
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 Staying Abreast of Data Center Events
On June 11th,
Intel sponsored a live event on
Eco-Technology Issues in data centers, broadcast widely via the webinar. You can see the three debates on the
Mission Critical webhttp://www.missioncriticalmagazine.com ac vs. dc power, liquid vs. air cooling, and thin clients vs. managed thick clients.The organizers of this event are among many industry groups providing leadership throughout the summer. For a look at other groups and their summer events, visit the
CFRT, Datacenter Dynamics
, and NGDC websites. The ongoing momentum created in the spring to meet the challenges of making data centers more energy efficient will not be interrupted by summer vacations. Please read further in this enewsletter to learn about new books, meetings, and other efforts available now.
Kevin HeslinEditor, Mission Critical
Subscribe to
Mission Critical today!
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IBM Opens Green Data Center in Boulder
IBM announced on June 17th
that it had opened a 115,000 square-foot, energy-efficient facility
that includes 70,000 square feet of raised floor space and is part of a $350
million investment by the corporation in Boulder, CO, to help meet customer
demand worldwide for green data centers, while helping IBM and its
clients reduce energy costs. The
new data center features numerous leading-edge technologies and
services, including high density computing systems utilizing
virtualization technology, along with energy efficient power and
cooling technologies.
These, in conjunction with the center's energy-efficient design and construction, will allow IBM to reduce its overall carbon footprint compared to standard data centers. The opening comes one year after IBM launched Project Big Green, committing $1 billion per year to deliver technologies that help customers increase the level of energy efficiency in their data centers. Since then, IBM said it has engaged with more than 2,000 clients as part of the project, delivering a variety of hardware, software, and services technologies to help businesses reduce data center energy consumption and cut energy costs by more than 40 percent by certain measures.
With the 70,000-square-foot addition, IBM Boulder expands its hardened raised-floor operations from approximately 225,000 square feet to nearly 300,000 square feet. It is IBM's largest data center location worldwide.
To build the new data center, IBM retrofitted an existing office building on the Boulder campus. It reused 98 percent of the original building's shell, recycled 65 percent of the materials from the original building, and 25 percent of newly purchased material came from recycled products.
The facility will be partially powered by alternative energy sources, including more than one million kilowatt hours per year of wind-powered electricity purchased by IBM. This will result in a planned reduction of approximately two million pounds of carbon dioxide produced per year. Given Boulder's geographic location and existing infrastructure reliability, the site is an optimal location to leverage energy efficiency. When exterior temperature and humidity levels are favorable, the new data center's technology switches to free-cooling mode--utilizing a water economizer to dramatically reduce energy consumption.
Variable-speed pumps and motors were also installed in the air conditioning systems to balance the cooling capacities to the actual load. This further reduces energy usage and costs, and water taps were installed throughout the facility, providing flexibility for water-cooled IT equipment--like the IBM Power 6 technology--as well as today's air-cooled profiles. The center also uses low-sulfur fuels to reduce emissions from backup generators.
The facility's mechanical system design is 40 percent more efficient than one without heat exchangers for free-cooling, equating to a reduction of approximately 6,550 tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually. Its capacity is expandable to meet future technology requirements. The expanded data center became fully operational and began boarding clients in May 2008. 
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DOE Makes Profiler Tool Available for User Testing
The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Save Energy Now program released the Data Center Energy Profiler, or DC Pro, online software tool on June 4th for user testing. The tool is intended to help industries worldwide quickly diagnose how energy is being used by their data centers and how they might save energy and money. DC Pro can be used as a first step to help companies identify potential savings and reduce environmental emissions associated with energy production and use. Using DC Pro and information about data center may require about an hour to complete a profile. The tool provides an overview of energy purchases, data center energy
use, savings potential, and a list of specific actions to take to realize these savings. DOE invites users to test the beta version of DC Pro and provide feedback.
For more information or assistance, contact the EERE Information Center or call 1-877-EERE-INF (1-877-337-3463).
Key Research Findings from Datacenter Dynamics
Datacenter Dynamics
published a report in April 2008 entitled United States: Datacenter
Infrastructure Trends & Market Attitudes. The report examines the
current and future state of the datacenter sector across the U.S. It
presents information on:
- Industry and facility profiling
- Key industry trends
- Key concerns and attitudes
- Current and future investment in the sector
- Technology adoption and intention.
The
findings presented in this report are derived from five
Datacenter Dynamics events in 2007 which, in total, generated 907
responses. The New York section includes also trend information based
on comparisons with research conducted at Datacenter Dynamics New York
in March 2008.
Respondents collectively operate around 300,000
racks across over around 35 million square feet. New York and San
Francisco account for the largest numbers of racks and the greatest
amount of space.
The average American facility portfolio operates at
5.5 kW/rack with an average maximum power draw of 11.6 kW/rack. Both of
these averages are higher than the Western European equivalents of 4.1
and 10.1 kW/rack respectively. Within the U.S., Chicago and San
Francisco display slightly higher
averages.
On average, the most
recently commissioned American facilities are 5.7 years old, and the
oldest are 16 years old. Western European facilities are, on average,
newer (3.3 and 14 years respectively). Within the U.S., facilities in
Chicago and Dallas tend to be slightly older.
Across the U.S., power
consumption, the cooling of high density configurations, and the
introduction of higher-density configurations are the top three issues
of concern. The American responses are more
concerned about lack of
investment in the sector, the loss of function, and the shortage of
suitable data center space than their Western European counterparts.
The European samples are more concerned by the environmental impact of
power consumption, lack of industry expertise, and poor vendor delivery.
The report is available from Datacenter Dynamics through its website.
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News Briefs
 Geist
launched its new website, which it bills as Your source for Data Center Power & Environmental Solutions.
Cassatt Corporation said that Bill Coleman, Cassatt chairman and CEO, was a keynote speaker at the new
O'Reilly Velocity Web Performance and Operations
Conference, June 23-24 at the San Francisco Airport Marriott in Burlingame, CA. Coleman talked on the first day of the show about the creation and importance of new green data centers. "The everyday use of the Internet has created a huge demand for data center infrastructure to support communication and collaboration in 'the cloud,'" said Coleman, "But simply adding more servers without altering how data centers operate means escalating energy consumption, computing capacity problems, serious environmental impact, and unmanageable costs."
S&C Electric Company broke ground for its new Advanced Technology Center (ATC) on June 17, 2008
at the John R. Conrad Industrial Complex. Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley attended the event along with a host of civic leaders representing the state, city, and the Rogers Park community.The testing laboratory at the heart of the new building will include two 850-megawatt electrical short-circuit test generators and six transformers and will operate at up to 230,000 volts. This unique facility will enable S&C, one of Chicago's leading manufacturing companies, to test prototypes of its innovative electrical products at home instead of relying on test labs outside the U.S.
Uptime Institute Executive Director Kenneth G. Brill will host the group's first live
Institute Member-only web conference on July 9, at 4 PM EST, to help participants answer questions such as:
- How will your organization respond to the primary recommendations of
the McKinsey & Company Report, Revolutionizing Data Center Efficiency-Key Analyses?
- What
will happen industry-wide in the next 12 to 24 months to contain
run-away data center spending, growing energy inefficiency in
enterprise computing, and the data center industry contribution to
carbon emissions footprint?
- What can you do to get started?
Pre-registration
is required and attendance is limited.
Sun published a new white paper entitled Energy Efficient Datacenters: The Role of Modularity In Datacenter Design. The report is being given away free to help educate customers and the industry on Sun's perspective of data center design strategies. The
entire report is available from Sun's website.
The report is bylined by seven field experts, including Mission Critical board member Dean Nelson. This Sun BluePrints Series article discusses the benefits of modularity in Sun's energy-efficient data center design. The article includes the following topics:
 - The range of requirements that Sun's data centers were designed to accommodate
- An overview of Sun's modular, pod-based design and how the Sun Modular Datacenter S20 represents a similar pod design
- Modular design elements, including physical design, power, cooling, and cabling
- How modular design elements were implemented in Sun's data centers worldwide, illustrating how the same components can be used to create data centers that all look quite different
- The business benefits of the modular design and looks towards the future that the design supports
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New Technologies
Cummins Power Generation
now offers closed-transition bypass switches from 150 to 4,000 amps for critical locations such as hospitals, data centers, and 24/7 call centers. Cummins' BTPC bypass switches offer redundant power transfer capability for situations where even a brief power interruption can have serious consequences. The closed-transition BTPC switch automatically transfers loads between two live sources (utility and backup) without interruption.
The BTPC consists of a rail-mounted, removable automatic transfer switch (ATS) and a fixed, manually operated bypass switch. Before the ATS is pulled out for repair or maintenance, the load power is diverted to the bypass switch. By having the bypass switch activated before the ATS is disconnected, the power supply continues without interruption. After the bypass switch is engaged, the ATS can be placed in one of three positions: connected (normal), test (powered but offline) and isolated (disconnected).
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Aperture
launched VISTA Integration Management, which enables applications for IT Service Management (ITSM) to be integrated with the Aperture VISTA suite for Data Center Service Management (DCSM). DCSM disciplines ensure that the data center is managed holistically using best-practice processes that span the IT and Facilities teams. It extends the principles of ITSM, a framework for managing IT services from a business rather than technical perspective, into the data center infrastructure. Aperture VISTA Integration Management includes all of Aperture's pre-packaged integration adapters, tools and utilities, and documented methods for integration with IT Service Management applications. VISTA
Integration Management is based on Aperture's web portal technology which combines high-performance, data-driven drawing, database, report writing, and power modeling engines with configurable forms, portal configuration tools, and administration functions for global deployment over the web. Web services platforms and standards are used so that interactions can occur with the widest variety of third party systems and tools.
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Eaton Corporation
updated its Power Xpert Architecture, a web-based solution for measuring, monitoring, connecting and managing power systems. As part of Eaton's PowerChain Management solutions, the Power Xpert Architecture helps enterprises proactively manage their power systems as strategic, integrated assets, thus helping them achieve a competitive advantage. The architecture enables organizations to integrate multi-vendor power and facilities infrastructure equipment into a seamlessly unified system. Using Power Xpert components, Information Technology (IT) and facility managers have complete visibility and access to real-time, synchronized power quality information at both the system and equipment
levels.
Power Xpert Architecture is an Ethernet-based management system that provides a seamless pathway for large volumes of data collected across the power system. The architecture is comprised of several components such as software, gateways, meters, switches and network time servers.
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Contribute to the Data Center WikiOur low-tech Wiki
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