All About Green Data Centers

May 26
2010

Everyone of us is nowadays looking to keep the environment green and businesses of all types and sizes can play a very active role in reducing the waste and energy consumption. How? Recycling, purchasing the products that are produced from recycled materials, telecommuting options, making use of different energy sources and, obviously, choosing green data center services.

green data center All About Green Data Centers

What are green data center services? There are not many variations, but for this discussion we will focus on the groups that are using eco friendly sources for electrical power. Servers are pretty much sensitive and they need everything from stable and cooled environments to huge amounts of electricity. This all adds up to a lot of energy consumption and the green data center services work to ensure that they trim down or completely eliminate their reliance on anything but renewable resources.

For instance, if  the service provider is not able to generate their own electrical service by using wind, solar, bio-gas or geothermal equipment, they can purchase Renewable Energy Certificate because of which the power they will be using, will be supplied from the company that uses only natural and renewable methods of generating electricity for public consumption.

Obviously there are some green data center service providers that are effectively generating all of their own electricity. These groups also utilize solar panels, wind turbines and other mass energy production techniques to keep their equipment performing at optimal, reliable and impact free levels.

The green data center service providers may possibly pass on special discounts to non-profit agencies and organizations or to companies who offer telecommuting to their staff or employees. They may also  provide totally free software; use offices powered fully by renewable energies and may be completely paperless.

Do they charge more? This is something that is little tough to answer. Although they may not save much money, and run at the same price because of other competitors, it is important to remember that how a single paperless company can reduce energy and materials wasted by the hundreds of tons. Think about the positives and beneficial global effects of millions of organizations participating in the green initiative simply by signing up with green data center service provider.

Technology of Data Centers Developed in India

May 26
2010

As we think about the cooling solutions, only choice data center operators are left with is hot or cold aisle layout. To solve the problem and to make cooling in data centers more flexible, a new cooling technology that has just come to the world of data centers is submerged servers.

submerged servers Technology of Data Centers Developed in IndiaThis cooling technology vows to cool high density server installations with an operating cost of one third of the conventional cooling of data centers. The technology of submerged servers look like rack tilted on its on back and servers are introduced into slots in the enclosure, which is then filled with a coolant which is similar to mineral oil.

As said by the experts, the engineering used with submerged servers will help the data center service providers to save a large amount of investments, since the cooling of data centers will be done without CRAC units or chillers and raised floor cooling. The cooling system of a data center uses most of the electricity and because of this reason it covers most of the operating cost of a data center. Raised floor plans, hot and cold aisles, CRAC units and chillers are the basics of cooling in data center all around the globe.

All these units are pretty much good in keeping equipments of data center cool, but they cost too much. They use huge amount of power and because of this, it increases the operating cost of data centers.

Submerged cooling will be pretty much beneficial in the field of cooling in data centers. Data centers in India are offering and using the same technology to cut the operating costs. This technology is not so new and mineral oil is been used as a coolant in immersion cooling for a long time. Mineral oil is a good coolant because it transfers heat just like water without conducting any electric charge. The coolant to be used in the technique of submerged servers is specifically modified for the use of cooling in data centers. This special coolant is known as GreenDEF and it can handle heat loads more than 100 kilowatts per 42U rack.

This capacity is way beyond the capacity of current average units which can only handle 3-9 watts per rack and high density units which can handle 10-30 kilowatts per rack. This coolant is pretty much different from other coolants that were previously used in immersion cooling. There are some more advantages which are related with submerged cooling which covers cost to performance like:

  • The Chillers and as well as Crack units are not been used so it cut-down power usage.
  • Cut-down of the operating expenses by up to 35%.
  • Air management engineering is not required.
  • Overall maintenance cost is decreased.
  • More than 100 kilowatts of load can be handled
  • Nearly all the servers are compatible with this new technology.
  • Container version is pretty much flexible than other cooling options so they can be installed anywhere.