Microsoft’s Daniel Costello, Engineering Approach to Solve Data Center Design

April 29, 2009 Dave Ohara

Microsoft’s Daniel Costello has a good post on an engineering approach to solve data center business problems.

Before I get into what Daniel wrote, let’s contrast what typically happens in a data center project.

1) Collect the stakeholder requirements for the data center.

2) Forecast capacity requirements to determine how big the data center needs to be to meet the requirements.

3) Sell the project internally. Data centers are mission critical and meeting the requirements is #1 priority.

4) Bid out the project to industry experts.

Now let’s look at Daniel’s steps.

1) Time to Market

2) Cost

3) Efficiency

4) Flexibility and Density

And the goals of the Microsoft team.

The Goals our Engineering Team Set

· Reduce time-to-market and deliver the facility at the same time as the computing infrastructure

· Reduce capital cost per megawatt and reduce COGS per kilowatt per month by class

· Increase ROIC and minimize the up-front investment for data centers

· Differentiate reliability and redundancy by data center class and design the system to be flexible to accommodate any class of service in the same facility

· Drive data center efficiency up while lowering PUE, water usage, and overall TCOE

· Develop a solution to accept multiple levels of density and form factors, such as racks, skids, or containers

Why take this approach?

Perhaps most importantly, with Generation 4 we can quickly add capacity incrementally in response to demand. Gone are the days when we had to wait 12-18 months for a large data center to be built, only to use a small portion of its capacity while we waited for demand to catch up to capacity. In short, our Generation 4 design delivers a revolution in terms of time to market that the data center industry has never seen before.

Modular Containerized Data Center Construction, learning from Pharmaceutical

April 24, 2009 Dave Ohara

I was talking to an experienced precon engineer (Dave Irvin, Skanska Preconstruction Director) about modular data center construction, and he pointed out Pharmaceuticals have been doing this for a while.

I found this pdf on “why, when, how to benefit from modular projects.”

There an challenges for modular construction.

And some good pictures to give you an idea of scale.

There are 25 slides in the presentation that gives you some good things to think about.

Financial Constraints Changing Data Center Design

April 24, 2009 Dave Ohara

WSJ has an article on how the world of architecture has changed.

The Sky's No Longer the Limit

Rem Koolhaas reflects on the global slowdown's effect on ambitious projects; the aftermath of a fire

By J.S. MARCUS

ROTTERDAM, the Netherlands -- Rem Koolhaas's massive, doughnut-shaped CCTV building in Beijing survived unscathed in February when a fire engulfed a nearby tower belonging to the same complex. But the event signaled the ending of an architectural era.

"I don't even know about the word 'downturn,' " said Mr. Koolhaas in his office in Rotterdam recently, reflecting on the global economic slowdown that has stopped the architecture world dead in its tracks. "It's seems simply the end to a period."

All around the world, major architectural projects are under threat. In November, construction stopped on the Russia Tower, a 600-meter-high Moscow building designed by the London firm Norman Foster & Partners. Meanwhile, another Norman Foster Moscow project, called Crystal Island, featuring a 450-meter-high, funnel-shaped skyscraper, has also been put on hold.

The ideas in the article apply to data center construction.

"A reappraisal is going on in the architecture world," said Cecil Balmond, the London-based engineer who has worked closely with Mr. Koolhaas for over two decades. "In a time of plenty, there is a bravado and a push to make more and more sensational [architectural] statements." In the current climate, he noted, "a very spectacular iconic project might now get the pause button."

How many data center projects do you know have been put on hold?

How many projects were a superset of stakeholder requirements, and energy efficiency was not the top issue? Many projects moving forward now are ones that were designed to be more efficient than the legacy data center services, so the projects are a cost reduction in the long term.

The green data centers are getting built and the inefficient ones are put on hold.

Andrew Fanara, Energy Star Manager – What’s Next for the Data Center Industry? – Partner for Success

April 1, 2009 Dave Ohara

Andrew started off his presentation at the Google Efficiency Data Center Summit with an overview of the forces impacting the data center now. The complexity is growing at a rate faster than energy use.

There are now multiple issues as the above graphic illustrates. This is occurring on a global basis. Anywhere gov’ts realize data centers are a critical part of a countries functioning and its companies.

As I was listening to Andrew’s presentation, it was kind of scary to think if you are not as big as a Google, building many data centers and have the resources to build their own custom servers. How do you build data centers addressing these issues?

What was kind of obvious once it was presented by Andrew was to have a data center development partner.

As an example, Andrew discussed how eBay has partnered with Skanska on data center development, to work as partners to change how data centers are developed, operated, and upgraded over its lifecycle.

Olivier Sanche, eBay’s Sr. Director Data Centers, provided this statement.

“We have a company vision of measuring and managing our carbon footprint that includes a hard look at the ways that information, facilities, and operations use energy and water resources. The partnership between eBay and Skanska has been instrumental in examining and executing on this.”

As Andrew had only a brief slides, I was able to get more information from Skanska’s Sr. VP, Jakob Carnermark.

Datacenters are complex and interconnected living systems. They unite the site, building and its systems with energy, water, technology and information. These centers are subject to an ever changing set of cost, availability, utilization, regulatory and environmental pressures. They interconnect to form a network of business crucial assets for almost every type of corporation.

Historically, buildings have been designed for a specific and fixed purpose. With the pace of change in business and in systems, this is no longer practical. Nowhere are the systems and business practices changing faster than in the datacenter world.

Embracing change as a constant requires a new approach to information systems, one that acknowledges information has both financial and energy costs and that visibility and incorporation of these costs into enterprise operations leads to more efficient and effective business practices.

As datacenters become increasingly modular, just-in-time delivery of data center capacity becomes essential. The inventory and capital cost of technical space built for future needs can be reduced as the supply chain is optimized to react quickly. Modules can be built safer, faster, and with fewer resources.

To create and manage this process, information access, discovery, transparency and context are essential. This integrated approach and just-in-time processes maximize datacenter utilization while reducing capital investment. Integrated practices enable the center to always operate at its peak while being prepared to upscale or down scale as required.

Zero-Emissions City in the Desert

February 25, 2009 Dave Ohara

In my visit to MIT earlier this week I heard of MIT’s participation in Abu Dhabi’s green metropolis. Here is the article in Technology Review.

Energy surplus: Masdar headquarters, shown in an architectural rendering, is designed to generate more renewable electricity than it consumes; it would be the first large-scale, multi-use building to do so.
Credit: ©Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture

The city will be an oasis of renewable energy in a country of five million, made rich by oil, that consumes the most natural resources per capita in the world. Seen one way, it's just the latest ostentatious project in a country that's been defined by them. Indeed, the UAE is already home to the world's tallest building and an enormous indoor ski facility that features a 200-meter-long black-diamond slope. Real-estate developers have dredged coral and sand from the sea floor, piling it up in the Persian Gulf to create islands in the shape of palm trees and a map of the world.

Yet many experts are optimistic that the city can become a test bed for new approaches to the engineering and architectural problems involved in creating environmentally sustainable cities. Although architects have already designed and builders constructed many small zero-emissions residences and commercial buildings, projects involving large, multi-use commercial buildings have fallen short of expectations, using too much energy or failing to generate enough. Part of the problem is the growing complexity that comes with scale, says J. Michael McQuade, senior vice president of science and technology at United Technologies in Hartford, CT; today's design software hasn't been able to handle it. But Masdar City, itself developed with the help of extensive modeling, will be wired from the beginning to collect data that could prove valuable for developing better models. That information could make future zero-emissions cities cheaper and easier to build.

Why?

And the development is meant to make money, not just introduce new technology. "We want Masdar City to be profitable, not just a sunk cost," said Khaled Awad, the project's director of property development, at a huge real-estate exhibition in Dubai last fall. "If it is not profitable as a real-estate development, it is not sustainable." Yet if it is, it may be replicable.