ACM TechNews
Data Centers: Focusing on Sustainability
Dr. Dobb's Journal (08/27/08)
Dallas Thornton, director of Cyberinfrastructure Services for the San
Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California, San Diego, says
in an interview that the center will move to a new facility that uses "a
natural hybrid ventilation system" that employs unaltered external and
internal air to supply adequate temperature and humidity to the building
over 95 percent of the time. Thornton estimates that U.S. data center
loads devour more than 1.5 percent of the national power supply, and notes
that federal and state governments, along with many power companies, are
offering incentives for more efficient IT practices and deployments. To
identify and leverage these opportunities, Thornton recommends that
companies more deeply meld data center facilities personnel to their IT
operations. "Virtualization of services, servers, and storage provide
opportunities for sharing unused resources and reducing the IT equipment
and power needed," says Thornton, who adds that many of the
virtualization-enabling software and hardware technologies also provide
features that streamline tough jobs and offer previously unavailable
redundancy options to IT administrators. The advent of cross-site
virtualization and greater ubiquitous data access will affect augmented
service-level redundancy and availability that will reduce the need to
implement expensive and power-consumptive local uninterruptable power
supply systems, generators, and redundant power distribution throughout
each center, saving millions of dollars in facilities costs and 10 percent
to 30 percent in ongoing energy consumption at each site, Thornton says.
He observes that along with the growing prevalence of technology in
people's daily lives is the mounting challenge of the underlying
infrastructure being taken for granted. He believes that
cyberinfrastructure "should become as accessible and reliable as the power
that comes from your local utility company."
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