MasterCard Campus with Main Data Center achieves LEED Gold for existing building

October 19, 2010 Dave Ohara

LEED is typically discussed for new data centers, but you can achieve LEED certification as well for existing structures.

Here is the press release.

MasterCard Campus is First in Missouri to Earn Green Building Certification

MasterCard Technologies Facility achieves Gold certification in the LEED® for Existing Buildings: Operations and Maintenance rating system.

St. Louis, October 19, 2010 - MasterCard Worldwide today announced that its main technology campus in O’Fallon, Missouri, has achieved Gold certification in the LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations and Maintenance (LEED®-EBOM) rating system. Established by the U.S. Green Building Council and verified by the Green Building Certification Institute, LEED is the preeminent program for the design, construction, and operation of high-performance green buildings.

The Data Center is mentioned as part of the site.

The 550,000-square-foot MasterCard Technologies campus, which is the company’s largest facility and home to its main data center, is the first project in Missouri to earn LEED-EBOM Gold certification.

Out of 550,000 sq ft how much is data center space? What I have been finding in the financial sector the space reported for data centers is lumped in with office worker space. How much work does the data center do?

In 2009, $2.5 trillion in gross dollar volume was generated on its products by consumers around the world. Powered by the MasterCard Worldwide Network — the fastest payment processing network in the world — MasterCard processes over 22 billion transactions each year, has the capacity to handle 140 million transactions per hour, with an average network response time of 140 milliseconds and with 99.99 percent reliability.

My initial guess is the data center space is less than 5 MW. So, let's find the MasterCard O'Fallon facility.

The facility is listed.

St. Louis
OPERATIONS CENTER2200 MasterCard Blvd
O’Fallon, MO 63368+7263 U.S.A
Telephone: 636.722.6100

Google maps shows the site at 200 MasterCard Blvd.

Bing Maps shows a nicer view to look at the data center. Go to Bird's eye view and you see how much of the space is used for office space with all the cars.

And you get a better view of the data center cooling system and generators.

So what is a guess on power? Asking an expert.

Looks like only 3 generators – probably not 3.0 MW since this has been around a little while – so I would guess 2.5 MW each. N+1 with some reserve for HVAC – maybe 4.0 MW of critical load. Maybe 3.0 MW

So, 3 - 4 MW of critical load capacity to run MasterCard's main data center.

NYSE is run on less than 2.5 MW. MasterCard main data center is run on less than 4 MW.

How much smaller do you think Financial data centers could be if they were built on Hadoop and HBase?

Gartner drops Green Data Center as top 10 strategy for 2011

October 19, 2010 Dave Ohara

ZDNet reports on Gartner's Top 10 Strategic Technology areas for 2011.

10 things: Handicapping Gartner's top technologies for 2011

By Larry Dignan | October 19, 2010, 6:26am PDT

Summary

Gartner outlined its top 10 technologies for 2011 that will give technology execs the most bang for their budgets. How many of these technologies will be a true hit?

Gartner on Tuesday outlined its top 10 technologies for 2011 that will give technology execs the most bang for their budgets. How many of these technologies will be a true hit?

Here is the 2010 vs 2011 list.

Note #4 and #5 - IT for Green and Reshaping the Data Center.

Does this mean there is a slowing in the interest in Green Data Centers?

I don't think so.

What this means is Gartner's revenue stream from sponsored research in this areas has dropped the topic out of the top 10.

The green data center hype should die down a bit which is good as much of the presentations were not worth people's time.

Greening the data center is a long term commitment, not a product category.

Greenpeace will help keep people focused on the environmental impact of data centers.

I would trade Greenpeace's environmental focus on 100% renewables data center energy vs. Gartner's sponsored research in Green IT to drive change in the industry.

The smart people/companies are figuring out how to work with environmental organizations. Could you imagine hiring Gartner to talk to Greenpeace? Now that would be a funny meeting to sit in.

Maybe Greenpeace should start protesting Gartner for not making 100% renewable energy a a corporate IT requirement in addition to going after Facebook. Let's see when Gartner changes its tune when government regulations mandate carbon reduction in IT.

Facebook dodges Holy Hand Grenade thrown by Greenpeace's Gary Cook at Data Center Energy Summit

October 16, 2010 Dave Ohara

I was going to live blog the SVLG Data Center Energy Summit on Oct 14, 2010, but after the first post I was sitting with some data center friends and we spent too much time discussing technical details during the Facebook and eBay presentation.

Holistic Approaches to Reducing Energy Use - Customer
Presented Case Studies
KC Mares, MegaWatt Consulting, DCES Co-Chair (moderator)
Dan Lee, Facebook
Veerendra Mular, Facebook
Rick Rehyner, eBay

Then I was in constant networking and didn't have time to blog.

One of the more entertaining moments is when Gary Cook from Greenpeace asked the last question in the Facebook session. Who is Gary Cook? Gary is the Greenpeace policy analyst who has been responding to Facebook's position on its data centers being coal powered.

Dear Barry:

Thanks for your response.

We appreciate your recognition that Facebook has a coal problem with its Oregon data center. However, where we disagree is your claim to be powerless to do anything about it as, like Greenpeace and others, Facebook simply has to buy whatever electricity is available. This is not the case for Greenpeace, and is certainly not the case for Facebook, who is an industrial scale consumer of electricity.

Gary got his chance to ask a question in the Facebook & eBay panel.

The Facebook engineers are the three guys to the left. eBay is to the right. And, far right is moderator KC Mares.

Gary Cook had a well thought out question.

The problem is instead of asking a simple quick question like "Facebook and eBay can you comment on your energy sources being coal powered." Gary went into a long series of questions and issues directed at Facebook that I lost track of, and there was almost no way for Facebook to answer his question.

When I tell others about Greenpeace asking the question it reminds of the infamous Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch Monty Python skit.

KC Mares took the question, and allowed Facebook's engineers to dodge the environmental hand grenade. I would expect eBay sighed in relief as they were not the intended target.

Later I was talking to another speaker at the conference and mentioned Gary Cook was there and they said "oh where is he?" which at first caught me be surprise. Then, I remembered I am at the event as press and not a data center builder, so what do I have to fear talking to Gary.

Attending data center events we learn to recognize a variety of people. Some you stir towards, some you stir away. I would expect most don't greet Gary with a look of "hey haven't seen you for a while, what are you up to" "oh, same old thing looking to corner the Facebook guys and get them to go to 100% renewable energy."

I hope you are laughing. I am writing this.

The Data Center Energy Summit was a great event to connect with great people. My apologies again for not being able to blog more during the event as I was too busy networking. and having some good laughs.

Data Center Efficiency Summit 2010, Live Blogging

October 14, 2010 Dave Ohara

Today I am going to Live blog at the Data Center Efficiency Summit 2010 at least until I get pulled into too many other meetings.

KC Mares kicks off and discusses the low carbon data center.

KC did a good job of describing where the data center industry is at and how energy efficiency and being greener fits in the future. Simple changes - changing temperature and humidity settings and changing containment.

Case Studies is part of the sharing and there is a long list.

Host sites for case studies:

AOL

Brocade

California Franchise Board

Oracle

eBay

Facebook

Kaiser Permanente

Microsoft

NetApp

Stanford University

Syracuse University

Verizon

Yahoo

Dave Stevens, CTO discusses the company, and the data center industry.

Brocade consolidated 5 data centers to 1. Mike tells the story of running out of power, and why he stays in California. We create jobs that create more jobs.

Here is a slide on the storage growth.

and Dave discusses the growth of data centers.

Dave makes the point the following is unsustainable.

and Future looks Virtual

Here is what Brocade's data center was like.

here is the new

What is the energy efficiency?

And the end results?

NYSE Mahwah Data Center Aerial views

October 12, 2010 Dave Ohara

60 minutes covered the opening of the NYSE data center and they promised not to disclose the site location.

Robot Traders of the NYSE

In a secret new building in New Jersey, high-speed computers decide which stocks to buy and sell. Could this kind of automated "trading floor" lead to Wall Street's next "flash crash"?

In Steve Kroft's "60 Minutes" report on high-frequency trading, you heard how most stock trades in the U.S. are no longer made by humans, but by computers capable of buying and selling stocks at warp speed.

I won't give the address. Yet. :-) I did find the address in a public source though. Just lucky researching low latency technology NYSE uses and there it was the address.

Here are pictures from Bing Maps and Google maps.

Any guesses on the power on site given the cooling picture below?

Here is the bare dirt.