Can China build Green Data Centers?

May 6, 2010 Dave Ohara

I am having conversations with an entrepreneur in China who is working on the Green Data Center idea in China. All the big data center operators have been to China to look for data center sites. I would expect most cannot find the right site for their data center operations for a variety of reasons. Building data centers will be difficult with a short term approach if you only want to build one building. What makes more sense is to take small incremental steps with continuous build out in China and other areas in Asia Pacific.

I've been to Beijing,Shanghai, and Hong Kong over a dozen times when I was working at Microsoft and Apple. As well as Japan, Taiwan, Korea, and Singapore. I saw many different sides of the country working with hardware suppliers, internal development groups, and software entrepreneurs.

Google's recent pullout of China can be interpreted in many ways and there are some interesting assumptions I can make based on some key people who are coincidentally now working in Google Asia who I used to work with. These ideas are much too complicated and subtle to try and write in a blog entry.

So, back to the problem of can China build Green Data Centers? Ideally China would have a few big US companies building data centers in China that Chinese engineers can learn from. But as far as I know no one has done this, even though a lot of have evaluated sites. Which makes things difficult, but creates an opportunity. China doesn't have data center people who have been doing the same thing for the last 20 years who want to build data centers the same way they did in the past.

China can build smaller data centers, using geo-redundancy as part of the design. Power may not exist, but China is building power generation faster than anyone else. So, it isn't what power is available. Tell me what power will be available. See this Economist article.

Electricity and development in China

Lights and action

China is parlaying its hunger for power into yet more economic clout

Apr 29th 2010 | HONG KONG | From The Economist print edition

AFTER a brief blip caused by the global economic slowdown, the electricity business in China is back to normal: in other words, it is buzzing. On April 26th Huaneng Power, the country’s biggest utility, began work on a nuclear reactor on the island of Hainan. The week before, the firm had announced that its power output had risen by 40% during the first quarter. The day before that, Datang International Power, the second-largest utility, had said its output was up by 33%. Surges of this magnitude, unimaginable in most countries, are commonplace in China.

China’s endless power-plant construction boom has accounted for 80% of the world’s new generating capacity in recent years and will continue to do so for many years to come, says Edwin Chen of Credit Suisse, an investment bank. Capacity added this year alone will exceed the installed total of Brazil, Italy and Britain, and come close to that of Germany and France. By 2012 China should produce more power annually than America, the current leader.

The US gov't hasn't treated the Data Center industry as a strategic industry to provide special treatment. China will.

Much of the data centers are built and designed to maximize profits for the vendors. Data Centers are the most profitable construction. The silos in Real Estate, Facilities, Data Center Ops, IT Ops, Finance, and SW are ripe for over specification for features that have little business value in the holistic view, but look right from a limited perspective. The top data center people know this which is why they have broken down the silos and integrated the functionality within one manager. Look to Google's Urs Hoelzle as the epitome of owning the data center stack, including SW infrastructure.

It is a bit of irony if China's data center strategy targeted Urs and his thinking as the customer, asking what he wants in data center infrastructure. Google wants cheap, reliable, cleaner power. Multiple Fiber paths. And, government support for the data center build out. In the US we hear about the tax incentives, and this is proof the local community wants the data center construction.

An example of the opportunity is to be work with the SinoHydro on a China Data Center strategy. Here a perspective you'll enjoy reading on China's HydroElectric build out.

China: Not the Rogue Dam Builder We Feared It would Be?

Hydropwer accounts for the overwhelming share of China’s alternative energy mix, but is perhaps also the one of the more controversial alternative energy options due to the ecological and social impacts of dam construction. This guest post by Peter Bosshard, policy director of International Rivers Network, examines China’s growing pains in its increasing role as an exporter of hydropower technology and expertise.

A few years ago, Chinese dam builders and financiers appeared on the global hydropower market with a bang. China Exim Bank and companies such as Sinohydro started to take on large, destructive projects in countries like Burma and Sudan, which had before been shunned by the international community. Their emergence threatened to roll back progress regarding human rights and the environment which civil society had achieved over many years. However, new evidence suggests that Chinese dam builders and financiers are trying to become good corporate citizens rather than rogue players on the global market. Here is a progress report.

Could you partner with China to build data centers around the world where dams are being built? The power generation is one part, and Fiber is next. Government support fits in easily as governments were involved in the Hydro construction.

One of Google's crown jewels are its data center designs. Is part of the reason why Google pulled out of China are the issues they ran into if they built a data center in China?

Equinix CTO 10 year perspective, data center changes in highly connected Internet services

April 15, 2010 Dave Ohara

I had the pleasure of interviewing Equinix's CTO David Pickut as part of Equinix reaching its 50th data center.

Equinix Opens 50th Premier IBX Data Center

Equinix’s 50th IBX Data Center Opens in London; Will Help Company Service Global Demand From Financial Services Firms and Cloud Service Providers

FOSTER CITY, CA and LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM – March 30, 2010 – Equinix, Inc. (NASDAQ: EQIX), a provider of global data center services, today announced a major company milestone: the opening of its 50th premier International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data center. This announcement demonstrates Equinix’s ability to help its customers fully leverage all of the benefits of an interconnected world.

If you are not familiar with David here is some background.

David Pickut

Chief Technology Officer

Dave Pickut joined Equinix in 2004 and served in several roles before settling into his current role as Chief Technology Officer. Prior to joining Equinix, Mr. Pickut held Vice President positions with a Tier 1 ISP and an IT products/services company, with responsibilities for data center operations and business management. His engineering experience encompasses both consulting services and product design related to mission-critical data center power, cooling, security, controls, and fire protection systems.

Mr. Pickut received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Ohio State University and is a registered professional engineer, a member of the IEEE and NFPA.

The perspective I was looking for is David's view of the past 10 years and what the future looks like. Over the past 10 years, Dave has seen three big changes in data centers.

Energy density in racks has gone up.
Energy Efficiency awareness has increased.
Transition from stand alone data center mindset to highly connected data centers.

This is best illustrated by drawings David provided. Here is what data centers looked like 10 years ago.

And this is what data center design looks like it 2010

Note in the upper left of each of these slides the external forces affecting data centers. This is proof I was looking for that Equinix is on the right path to Green (low carbon) Data Centers.

The mass media industry will cover Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple data centers. But, here is a simple way to understand the future of data centers. David and I chatted about many more things regarding the future 10 years, and he said it is easy to build energy efficient cost effective data centers. The hard part is accounting for the accelerating rate of external factors that now affect data center design. Those who put their "head in the sand" and geek out are setting themselves up for unexpected reactions like Greenpeace's focus on Facebook's coal powered data center.

Facebook Responds on Coal Power in Data Center
February 17th, 2010 : Rich Miller

An architectural rendering of the new Facebook data center planned for Prineville, Oregon.

Facebook has responded to growing criticism of its power choices for its new data center in Prineville, Oregon. This is one of the first cases in which a data center’s energy sourcing has attracted this kind of public attention, but it won’t be the last.

I am looking forward to more posts on what Equinix is doing, and their willingness to share ideas, and what the future of data centers look like. In 2010, there is SaaS, Cloud Provider, Ethernet Exchange, and Mobile Carrier. Can you imagine what 2020 will look like?

Microsoft’s Flexible Data Center System, Kevin Timmons presents at DCD NY

March 3, 2010 Dave Ohara

I couldn’t make it to DataCenterDynamics NY, but I have plenty of friends there, so I can get a virtual report.

Kevin Timmons gave the keynote and Rich Miller wrote up a nice entry.

Microsoft’s Timmons: ‘Challenge Everything’
March 3rd, 2010 : Rich Miller
The building blocks for Microsoft’s data center of the future can be assembled in four days, by one person. The two data center containers, known as IT PACs (short for pre-assembled components) proof of concept, are built entirely from aluminum. The first two proof of concept units use residential garden hoses for their water hookups.

“Challenge everything you know about a traditional data center,” said Kevin Timmons, who heads Microsoft’s Global Foundation Services, in describing the company’s approach to building new data centers. “From the walls to the roof to where it needs to be built, challenge everything.”

So much of what is wrong with data centers and prevent them from being Green is people do what they have done in the past. This includes the engineer companies and the customers who specify the data centers. You don’t hear customers saying “bring me a data center design no one has done before.”

The efficiency of the data center is a given to have a low PUE (sub 1.2), but with Cloud Computing and Mobile as top needs for data center growth, speed of how quickly you can add capacity is a higher requirement by executive decision makers.

Here is a video showing some of the concepts Microsoft has been willing to share.

and the blog post from Microsoft’s Daniel Costello.

Then we had to take these single lines and schematics and break them into logical modules for the components to reside in. This may seem easy but represents a shift in thinking from a building where, for instance, we would have a UPS room and associated equipment and switchgear manufactured by multiple vendors and put it physically in sometimes separate modules. The challenge became how to shift from a traditional construction mindset to the new, modularized manufacturing mindset. Maintainability is a large part of reliability in a facility, and became a key differentiator between the four classes. Our A Class infrastructure, which is not concurrently maintainable and is on basically street power and unconditioned air, will require scheduled downtime for maintenance. The cost, efficiency, and time-to-market targets for A Class are very aggressive and a fraction of what the industry has come to see as normal today. We realized that standardization and reuse of components from one class to the next was a key to improving cost and efficiency. Our premise was that the same kit of parts (or modules) should be usable from class to class. These modules (in this new mindset) can be added to other modules to transition within the data center from one class to the next.

I would call this a Flexible Data Center System. This has been done in manufacturing in flexible manufacturing systems for decades and is just now coming to data center design.

A flexible manufacturing system (FMS) is a manufacturing system in which there is some amount of flexibility that allows the system to react in the case of changes, whether predicted or unpredicted. This flexibility is generally considered to fall into two categories, which both contain numerous subcategories.

The advantage of this system is

Advantages

Faster, Lower- cost/unit, Greater labor productivity, Greater machine efficiency, Improved quality, Increased system reliability, Reduced parts inventories, Adaptability to CAD/CAM operations.

With one disadvantage.

Disadvantages

cost to implement.

But in data centers the cost to implement can be lower than traditional data centers with enough people adopting the approach. And, whereas the flexibility in manufacturing typically applies to the product produced, the flexibility concepts are being applied to the data center infrastructure.

And, what else is changing is the hardware that goes in these data centers. Microsoft’s Dileep Bhandarkar discussed here.

IT departments are strapped for resources these days, and server rightsizing is something every team can do to stretch their budgets. The point of my presentations and the white paper our team is publishing today is two-fold:

1. To quantify some of the opportunities and potential pitfalls as you look for savings, and

2. To present best practices from our experiences at Microsoft, where the group I lead manages server purchases for the large production data centers behind Microsoft’s wide array of online, live and cloud services.

Maybe Facebook should have bought a Bloom Box to diffuse Greenpeace’s campaign against a coal powered data center

February 22, 2010 Dave Ohara

Thanks to Matt Stansberry’s reporting on SearchDataCenter, attention was drawn to Facebook’s Prineville Data Center being coal powered.

Tiered energy rates bring higher prices for new customers
By 2012, BPA will charge tiered rates for power. Customers that signed 20-year contracts in 2008 will pay tier-one (i.e., inexpensive) pricing for their current electricity demand. These customers use most of the power produced by the dams.

By 2012, Oregon's Bonneville Power Administration will charge tiered rates for power.

To meet new customer demand or increased demand from existing customers, BPA also purchases power from other sources. In 2012 this electricity will be classified as tier two, and it will be charged at a much higher rate than the BPA's current hydropower.

Which brings us back to Facebook: The company's new data center is being built in Prineville, Ore., a small town on Oregon's high desert. Pacific Power, a utility owned by PacifiCorp, will provide the electricity. While Pacific Power gets some hydropower from BPA, its primary power-generation fuel is coal, according to Jason Carr, the manager of the Prineville office of economic development for Central Oregon.

With the price of hydropower increasing in the Northwest, Facebook opted to bet on the incremental price increases associated with coal rather than face tier-two pricing from BPA.

The news has spread to Greenpeace and Huffington.

Greenpeace, Huffington Post join chorus critical of Facebook's Prineville data center

By Mike Rogoway, The Oregonian

February 21, 2010, 2:20PM
On Friday, Greenpeace started its own campaign against Facebook's Prineville data center, joining others who want the social networking company to find an alternative to PacifiCorp coal.
The Huffington Post took up the cause Friday night.
Data Center Knowledge has an updated response from Facebook:
It’s true that the local utility for the region we chose, Pacific Power, has an energy mix that is weighted slightly more toward coal than the national average. However, the efficiency we are able to achieve because of the climate of the region and the reduced energy usage that results minimizes our overall carbon footprint. Said differently, if we located the data center most other places, we would need mechanical chillers, use more energy, and be responsible for more overall carbon in the air—even if that location was fueled by more renewable energy.

There is even a Facebook site for this topic with over 6,700 users.

Maybe Facebook should have done as Google and eBay and bought a Bloom Box to demonstrate its interest in renewable energy. Trouble is any moves now will be seen as damage control.

SJMercury discusses the unveiling at eBay on Weds.

Tech journalists have been summoned to the San Jose campus of eBay Wednesday for the official unveiling of the so-called "Bloom Box" at a high-powered event to include Bloom co-founder and CEO K.R. Sridhar, venture capitalist John Doerr, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and "a prominent California government official" widely believed to be Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

and Google is mentioned too.

Search engine giant Google was Bloom's first paying customer; a Bloom Box sits behind one of the buildings on the Mountain View campus and has been powering a large chunk of the building's energy needs since July 2008.

"We have a 400-kilowatt installation on Google's main campus that delivers clean and affordable power," said Google spokesman Jamie Yood. Over the first 18 months of the project, he said, the Bloom Box has functioned 98 percent of the time.

The Bloom Boxes are not at a data center site, but early investment in renewable energy solutions pays off in goodwill to show willingness to take risks.

We’ll see if the Greenpeace effort gains momentum or not, but it would have been harder for Greenpeace to attack Facebook if it could have made statements like Google and eBay.

Technical Peak behind the IBM and Johnson Controls Partnership for Smarter Buildings

February 22, 2010 Dave Ohara

IBM has a press release released today on its partnership with Johnson Controls for Smarter Buildings. The partnership extends an effort started in 2007 in data centers to any buildings.

IBM and Johnson Controls Join Forces to Make Buildings Smarter

Combined Offering to Enhance Energy and Operational Efficiencies

LAS VEGAS, - 22 Feb 2010: IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Johnson Controls (NYSE: JCI), today announced a new relationship to create a new era of smarter buildings. Together, the companies will team to provide a Smart Building Solution that can improve operations and reduce energy and water consumption in buildings worldwide.

Building on an existing relationship formed between the two organizations in 2007 to create energy efficient datacenters, this new offering benefits any building or portfolio of buildings. Johnson Controls will combine its global leadership in energy efficiency and sustainable services and technologies with IBM's global leadership in software, hardware and services. The result will help clients address the growing pressure they face to improve energy and asset management performance across their enterprises.

I was in the press room when Al Zollar and Rich Lechner made the announcement. I wasn’t that excited as I didn’t have enough details to write a blog entry. But, It is interesting the way some press reported.

GreenTechMedia has this.

IBM and Johnson Controls Team Up: Bad News for Building Start-Ups?

The giant of computing and the giant of building management are pals.

It's one step closer to the merger of building systems and IT systems. But it could be scary for start-ups and others promoting building management software.

Steve Evans from Computer Business Review reports.

Rich Lechner, VP, energy and environment for IBM, said that more intelligent building management systems are vital to future growth as well as the environmental benefits.

"Smart buildings are the cornerstone of our strategy to deliver a smarter infrastructure. They are critical to the long-term environmental and economic sustainability of cities around the world," he said. "This is not just about reducing waste, it's about reducing greenhouse gas emissions and enabling the infrastructure to support the dramatic growth in urbanisation that we're seeing."

This may seem scary for those like Hara Software.

I had a chance to wander the showroom floor and asked more questions from the Johnson Controls group. Did a little Google Searching, then found something that didn’t get reported in the IBM announcement. The Johnson Controls solution is built on their Oct 2008 acquisition of GridLogix.

Gridlogix was acquired by Johnson Controls (NYSE: JCI) effective on October 16. We are now part of the largest global provider of integrated products, systems and services for commercial, industrial and residential buildings. With over 500 locations in more than 125 countries, Johnson Controls creates quality indoor environments that are energy efficient, safe and comfortable. To learn more about Johnson Controls, please visit www.johnsoncontrols.com.

As one of the Johnson Controls explained they are working to abstracting all the building management systems with their offering and enabling fault detection in addition to data feeds.

Anyone who wants to work with John Controls building management solution can gain much of what IBM has from a technical standpoint. Note this commitment from Johnson Controls to open standards.

Systems Integration

Whether you need open systems protocol integration, propriety building automation integration or a custom integration solution, Johnson Controls has the technological depth and facilities management expertise to meet your business needs.

Open Systems Standards

The Metasys® building management system was designed from the ground up with open standards of communications in mind. Whether your needs demand BACnet, BACnet MSTP, LonWorks, Modbus, N2, XML, Web Services or OPC, Johnson Controls can provide you with a complete integrated solution.

Proprietary Standards
The Metasys platform provides a wide array of paths to integrate propriety protocols and systems from most major manufacturer’s equipment, including Honeywell, Siemens, Andover, CSI, Invensys, Trane, and others.

Some numbers quoted today by IBM sound just like GridLogix results from their 2008 website.

Information Management for Sustainability
Gridlogix provides your organization with the tools for sustaining your enterprise. More than going "Green", Gridlogix helps you continuously cut wasteful costs, prolong the life of your facilities’ equipment, and maintain a comfort level throughout your enterprise. With Gridlogix's Automated Enterprise Management solution, Gridlogix empowers anyone in your organization with the real time data that allows your organization to improve the efficiency of your facilities, typically reducing energy and maintenance costs by 10-20% with a payback of less than 18 months. Gridlogix delivers the best form of Green Energy, conservation.

Here is a video of GridLogix system.