HP has announced it has completed installation of an HP EcoPOD at its Alpharetta, GA, next-generation data center (NGDC), extending the company’s leadership in energy efficiency.
The HP EcoPOD—the world’s most-efficient data center—is located on-site and expands the compute space of one of the HP data centers that was a part of the company’s original transformation to consolidate 85 internal IT data centers worldwide to six NGDCs in the United States.
Fully populated, the 40-ft HP EcoPOD will hold 2,000 new HP ProLian t and HP Integrity servers, the compute-capacity equivalent to approximately 20,000 sq ft of the company’s existing NGDC space.
“This is a great example of HP’s Converged Infrastructure, covering everything from facilities to networking to servers to software in a self-contained powerhouse unmatched in the industry,” said Ken Gray, vice president IT Infrastructure team. “One of the biggest pain points we hear from our customers is how to add compute space quickly and cost effectively—EcoPODs address that.”
HP also is nearing completion of the installation of a 40-ft HP EcoPOD in a second Atlanta-area data center operated by the HP IT organization, this one in Suwannee, GA. HP EcoPODs also are under construction at the two data centers in Austin, TX.
The factory installation and configuration of the servers, storage, network, and backup devices within the HP EcoPOD allowed for seamless and rapid integration into the existing data center. The additional compute capacity allows HP more flexibility to refresh the technology of the data center itself.
The HP EcoPODs in the Atlanta area were ordered and preinstalled with 500 terabytes of HP XP P9500 Storage array, as well as HP networking and SAN switches. They also were 25 percent prepopulated with HP BladeSystem c7000 enclosures housing 500 HP Integrity servers.
The rest of the HP EcoPOD will be populated with HP ProLiant Generation 8 (Gen8) servers for additional compute capacity to help operate the HP private cloud.
HP’s enterprise-class, highly available brick-and-mortar NGDCs are more energy efficient than most similar-tiered data centers. The HP EcoPOD, which can reduce energy use by 95 percent when compared to a traditional facility,(1)includes adaptive cooling technology that automatically optimizes the cooling modes between economization (free outside air) and direct expansion (DX) cooling modes.
The HP EcoPOD deployments meet the same enterprise high-availability standards as a traditional data center, while being significantly more energy efficient. The power usage effectiveness (PUE) rating, a measure of data center energy overhead, will be as low as 1.05, compared to a PUE of 2.0 or more for a traditional brick-and-mortar facility.(2)
HP’s hybrid approach means that the HP EcoPOD configuration also uses the same monitoring, service and support processes and procedures as the NGDC it is next to. The entire structure also meets traditional data center requirements, including weather and earthquake ratings for the site in Alpharetta.
