Mission Critical - Winter 2008 - (Page 64)

Data Center The true challenge is to increase MIPS without burning up BY TIM PHILLIPS More Data in the E xponential growth in e-commerce, Internet communication, and entertainment has led to an ever-increasing demand for more servers and data storage. The move of these communication paths from a real-time media environment to a demand-driven, IP packet-based environment creates a tremendous opportunity for energyefficient infrastructure equipment for the data center. As central offices give way to network switches, commerce becomes server-driven, and media programming becomes packetized, it becomes necessary to re-think power management strategies. While many companies seek to be “green” and reduce the environmental impact of electricity use, sufficient space and power or cooling capacity required to expand their businesses must also be developed. Data centers accounted for approximately 1.5 percent of total US electricity consumption in 2006 — more than 60 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) (see figure 1) — at a cost of $4.5 billion, while the cost to power and cool servers worldwide surpassed $26 billion. With this sum growing at four times the rate of server spending, information technology professionals must consider the total cost of ownership of the data center in their purchasing decisions of infrastructure equipment, such as servers, storage area networks, routers, and switches. The cost to operate this equipment over its lifetime is now about three times larger than the original hardware purchase. As a result, aggressive targets to cut energy consumption have been set by the leading technology solutions providers. The traditional method of measuring the performance of the data center by throughput (MIPS: millions of instructions per second) or performance density (MIPS/square foot) alone is no longer sufficient. The key metric moving forward to measure efficiency is based on performance efficiency, or MIPS per watt (W). Leading data center equipment providers have set aggressive goals to increase MIPS/W by a factor of ten by 2010, while reducing overall Rising energy use Electricity use for data storage, ranging from small office servers to large data centers, more than doubled from 2000 to 2006, and is expected to double again in the next five years. Annual electricity use (billion kilowatt-hour) 61.4 60 50 40 28.2 Tim Phillips is currently vice president at International Rectifier for the Enterprise Power Business Unit. Prior to joining IR in February of 2001, he held positions in Power IC Design Engineering, Product Marketing, and Business Development at ON Semiconductor and Cherry Semiconductor. Phillips earned both his BSEE and MBA from the University of Rhode Island. 30 20 10 0 ‘00 ‘01 ‘02 ‘03 ‘04 ‘05 ‘06 Source: Environmental Protection Agency Figure 1: Data storage electricity consumption 64 | Mission Critical Winter 2008

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Mission Critical - Winter 2008

Mission Critical - Winter 2008 Table of Contents Editorial: What Have We Been Doing? Cronin’s Workshop: Imagining the Perfect Data Center Power And Cooling Solution Digital Power: The Next Edge in Business Resiliency Zinc Whiskers: Keeping Up With The Green Movement Mission Critical Care: Shipping, Staging, and Installation Legal Perspectives: “A Reliable Energy Supply Is Key to Data Center Success” Continued Payback, Instant Protection Beyond the Nines The Green Information Technology Revolution Health Care Network Offers Glimpse of the Future of Backup Power High-Density Data Centers – Discuss, Design, Deploy High Performance Data Centers Call for Innovative Cooling Techniques More Data in the Data Center Five Considerations for Powering Data Center Racks New Products Industry News Events Classifieds Letters Ad Index Datacenter Wiki: wiki-Mission Critical

Mission Critical - Winter 2008

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