Power-aware workload allocation for green data centers

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 678-703
Author(s):  
Louma Ahmad Chaddad ◽  
Ali Chehab ◽  
Imad Elhajj ◽  
Ayman Kayssi
Keyword(s):  
Performance Optimization ◽  
Data Center ◽  
Data Centers ◽  
Energy Savings ◽  
Thermal State ◽  
Energy Performance ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Non Linear Programming ◽  
Server Selection ◽  
Workload Allocation

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present an approach to reduce energy consumption in data centers. Subsequently, it reduces electricity bills and carbon dioxide footprints resulting from their use. Design/methodology/approach The authors present a mathematical model of the energy dissipation optimization problem. The authors formulate analytically the server selection problem and the supply air temperature as a non-linear programming, and propose an algorithm to solve it dynamically. Findings A simulation study on SimWare, using real workload traces, shows considerable savings for different data center sizes and utilization rates as compared to three other classic algorithms. The results prove that the proposed algorithm is efficient in handling the energy-performance trade-off, and that the proposed algorithm provides significant energy savings and maintains a relatively homogenous and stable thermal state at the different rack units in the data center. Originality/value The proposed algorithm ensures energy provisioning, performance optimization over existing state-of-the-art heuristics, and on-demand workload allocation.

Data centers as the backbone of smart cities: principal considerations for the study of facility costs and benefits

Facilities ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick T.I. Lam ◽  
Daniel Lai ◽  
Chi-Kin Leung ◽  
Wenjing Yang
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Real Estate ◽  
Data Center ◽  
Data Centers ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Cost And Benefit ◽  
Mission Critical ◽  
The Impact

Purpose As smart cities flourish amidst rapid urbanization and information and communication technology development, the demand for building more and more data centers is rising. This paper aims to examine the principal issues and considerations of data center facilities from the cost and benefit dimensions, with an aim to illustrate the approaches for maximizing the net benefits and remain “green.” Design/methodology/approach A comprehensive literature review informs the costs and benefits of data center facilities, and through a case study of a developer in Hong Kong, the significance of real estate costs is demonstrated. Findings Major corporations, establishments and governments need data centers as a mission critical facility to enable countless electronic transactions to take place any minute of the day. Their functional importance ranges from health, transport, payment, etc., all the way to entertainment activities. Some enterprises own them, whilst others use data center services on a co-location basis, in which case data centers are regarded as an investment asset. Real estate costs affect their success to a great extent, as in the case of a metropolitan where land cost forms a substantial part of the overall development cost for data centers. Research limitations/implications As the financial information of data center projects are highly sensitive due to the competitive status of the industry, a full set of numerical data is not available. Instead, the principles for a typical framework are established. Originality/value Data centers are very energy intensive, and their construction is usually fast tracked costing much to build, not to mention the high-value equipment contents housed therein. Their site locations need careful selection due to stability and security concerns. As an essential business continuity tool, the return on investment is a complex consideration, but certainly the potential loss caused by any disruption would be a huge amount. The life cycle cost and benefit considerations are revealed for this type of mission-critical facilities. Externalities are expounded, with emphasis on sustainable issues. The impact of land shortage for data center development is also demonstrated through the case of Hong Kong.

Energy Performance Analysis of a Combined Cooling Heating and Power System for a Data Center

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donghao Xu ◽  
Ming Qu
Keyword(s):  
Data Center ◽  
Gas Turbines ◽  
Data Centers ◽  
Energy Performance ◽  
Hot Water ◽  
Absorption Chillers ◽  
Modern Business ◽  
Combined Cooling ◽  
Supply Systems ◽  
Energy Supply Systems

Data centers play an important role in modern business. They require a large amount of electricity and cooling energy simultaneously. In 2007, the percentage of total energy consumed by data centers in total US energy doubled over seven years and it is estimated to be double again by 2012. Currently data centers typically employ separate cooling, heating and power (SCHP) systems. The Combined Cooling Heating and Power (CCHP) system is an efficient, clean, and reliable approach to generating power and thermal energy from a single fuel source simultaneously on site. They could be suitable energy supply systems for data centers since demands from data centers match with the energy generation of the CCHP systems. This paper assesses the energy performance of a CCHP system for the Qualcomm data center in San Diego, California, by means of modeling and operational data analysis. The CCHP system mainly consists of four gas turbines, one exhaust fired absorption chiller, three hot water fired absorption chillers, three electrical chillers and seven cooling towers. System performance models have been developed and validated by experimental data in TRNSYS. The modeling result shows that the CCHP system is capable of meeting the electricity and cooling demands with an overall system efficiency of 46%. As a result, the CCHP system could approximately save 12.9GWh of energy per year compared with SCHP systems. Therefore, the CCHP system is a sustainable and green option for data centers.

Investigating the climate-adaptive design strategies of residential earth-sheltered buildings in Iran

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elahe Mirabi ◽  
Fatemeh Akrami Abarghuie
Keyword(s):  
Energy Consumption ◽  
Thermal Comfort ◽  
Adaptive Design ◽  
Energy Savings ◽  
Adaptive Strategy ◽  
Energy Performance ◽  
Orientation Factor ◽  
Design Strategies ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Numeric Data

PurposeThe earth-sheltered building is an adaptive strategy reducing energy consumption as well as increasing thermal comfort of the residents. Although this idea historically implemented in the city of Yazd, Iran, its effects on thermal comfort have not been studied thoroughly. This paper aims to discuss and analyze energy performance, in terms of parameters such as orientation, underground depth, nocturnal ventilation and its subsequent effects on thermal comfort in earth-sheltered buildings in Yazd.Design/methodology/approachUsing EnergyPlus software, the obtained numeric data are precisely modeled, simulated and analyzed.FindingsResults show that there is a direct relationship between depth of construction and energy consumption savings. The more construction depth of earth-sheltered buildings, the more percentage of energy consumption savings, that is of a higher rate in comparison to the aboveground ones. However, in south orientation, energy saving significantly reduces from depth of 2 m downwards and the annual indoor temperature fluctuation decreases by 50%. This subsequently yields to experiencing indoor thermal comfort for a significant number of days throughout the year. Considering the effects of orientation factor, the south orientation regardless of the depth provides the most desired outcome regarding energy savings.Originality/valueSimulating the model generalized to the sunken courtyard can approve that the results of this research can be applied to the other models.

scholarly journals Minimizing Thermal Stress for Data Center Servers through Thermal-Aware Relocation

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Tayyab Chaudhry ◽  
T. C. Ling ◽  
S. A. Hussain ◽  
Atif Manzoor
Keyword(s):  
Thermal Stress ◽  
Data Center ◽  
Data Centers ◽  
Heat Dissipation ◽  
Thermal State ◽  
Inlet Temperature ◽  
Outlet Temperature ◽  
State Monitoring ◽  
Performance Loss ◽  
Cooling Mechanism

A rise in inlet air temperature may lower the rate of heat dissipation from air cooled computing servers. This introduces a thermal stress to these servers. As a result, the poorly cooled active servers will start conducting heat to the neighboring servers and giving rise to hotspot regions of thermal stress, inside the data center. As a result, the physical hardware of these servers may fail, thus causing performance loss, monetary loss, and higher energy consumption for cooling mechanism. In order to minimize these situations, this paper performs the profiling of inlet temperature sensitivity (ITS) and defines the optimum location for each server to minimize the chances of creating a thermal hotspot and thermal stress. Based upon novel ITS analysis, a thermal state monitoring and server relocation algorithm for data centers is being proposed. The contribution of this paper is bringing the peak outlet temperatures of the relocated servers closer to average outlet temperature by over 5 times, lowering the average peak outlet temperature by 3.5% and minimizing the thermal stress.

scholarly journals Optimized data center site selection—mesoclimatic effects on data center energy consumption and costs

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk Turek ◽  
Peter Radgen
Keyword(s):  
Energy Consumption ◽  
Site Selection ◽  
Data Center ◽  
Data Centers ◽  
Energy Savings ◽  
Selection Process ◽  
National Level ◽  
Small Radius ◽  
Average Maximum ◽  
National Borders

AbstractThe effect of the location on the energy consumption of data centers has already been studied in detail on the macro-climatic level. To take advantage of these effects, however, it is usually necessary for the location of data centers to cross international borders. The influence of site changes within national borders and in a small radius of < 100 km has not yet been quantified. To investigate this, a dynamic mathematical model of the temperature-dependent components of a reference data center was created and the influence on the energy consumption in an area of 240 × 215 km in Germany was investigated. It could be shown that even small changes of the location within a 10 km radius of a location lead to annual energy savings in the recirculating chiller of 9.12% on average (maximum 56.58%). With a freedom of location of 100 km within national borders, savings of 37.35% on average (maximum 76.11%) are even possible. Location-dependent optimizations are therefore also relevant at local and national level with regard to their influence on energy consumption, and the consideration of mesoclimatic aspects should be an elementary part of the site selection process for data centers in the future.

Qualitative Study of Cumulative Corrosion Damage of IT Equipment in a Data Center Utilizing Air-Side Economizer

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jimil M. Shah ◽  
Oluwaseun Awe ◽  
Pavan Agarwal ◽  
Iziren Akhigbe ◽  
Dereje Agonafer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Relative Humidity ◽  
Data Center ◽  
Data Centers ◽  
Energy Savings ◽  
Evaporative Cooling ◽  
Corrosion Damage ◽  
Air Cooling ◽  
Single Server ◽  
Severity Level ◽  
Particulate Contamination

Deployment of air-side economizers in data centers is rapidly gaining acceptance to reduce the cost of energy by reducing the hours of operation of CRAC units. Use of air-side economizers has the associated risk of introducing gaseous and particulate contamination into data centers, thus, degrading the reliability of Information Technology (IT) equipment. Sulfur-bearing gaseous contamination is of concern because it attacks the copper and silver metallization of the electronic components causing electrical opens and/or shorts. Particulate contamination with low deliquescence relative humidity is of concern because it becomes wet and therefore electrically conductive under normal data center relative humidity conditions. IT equipment manufacturers guarantee the reliability of their equipment operating in environment within ISA 71.04-2013 severity level G1 and within the ASHRAE recommended temperature-relative humidity envelope. The challenge is to determine the reliability degrading effect of contamination severity levels higher than G1 and the temperature and humidity allowable ranges A1–A3 well outside the recommended range. This paper is a first attempt at addressing this challenge by studying the cumulative corrosion damage to IT equipment operated in an experimental data center located in Dallas, known to have contaminated air with ISA 71.04-2013 severity level G2. The data center is cooled using an air-side economizer. This study serves several purposes including: the correlation of equipment reliability to levels of airborne corrosive contaminants and the study of the degree of reliability degradation when the equipment is operated, outside the recommended envelope, in the allowable temperature-relative humidity range in geographies with high levels of gaseous and particulate contamination. The operating and external conditions of a modular data center, located in a Dallas industrial area, using air-side economizer is described. The reliability degradation of servers exposed to outside air via an airside economizer was determined qualitatively examining the corrosion of components in the servers and comparing the results to the corrosion of components in a non-operating server stored in a protective environment. The corrosion-related reliability of the servers over almost the life of the product was related to continuous temperature and relative humidity for the duration of the experiment. This work provides guidance for data center administration for similar environment. From an industry perspective, it should be noted that in the four years of operation in the hot and humid Dallas climate using only evaporative cooling or fresh air cooling, we have not seen a single server failure in our research pod. That performance should highlight an opportunity for significant energy savings for data center operators in a much broader geographic area than currently envisioned with evaporative cooling.

Architecture as a strategy for reduced energy consumption? An in-depth analysis of residential practices’ influence on the energy performance of passive houses

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 192-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Solvår Wågø ◽  
Thomas Berker
Keyword(s):  
Energy Consumption ◽  
Energy Efficient ◽  
Energy Savings ◽  
Energy Performance ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
New Energy ◽  
Passive Houses ◽  
The One ◽  
Actual Energy Consumption

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss how architectural solutions may influence residential practice and energy consumption. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is part of a larger study based on qualitative investigations of six energy-efficient housing projects in Norway. Here, the authors examine one of these projects, Løvåshagen in Bergen, the first Norwegian passive house flat building. Based on a combination of 14 interviews with household members and energy consumption data for all flats, the authors show how residential practices influence energy consumption. In the discussion and conclusion, the authors focus on the role of the architecture in these practices. Findings – On the one hand, Løvåshagen reflects a mainstreaming approach to sustainable building, attracting a wide array of different occupants. On the other hand, the specific add-ons that are intended to make the buildings energy efficient require new definitions of comfort and new skills to achieve the promised energy savings. This combination can explain why Løvåshagen, after four years of occupation, has a large variation in actual energy consumption. Practical implications – In designing new energy-efficient housing, greater attention should be paid to the level of end-user control and adaptability, the level of system complexity, and the need for adequate information. An alternative to the mainstreaming approach would be to actively use architecture to influence residential practices towards reduced energy consumption. Originality/value – The use of qualitative methods to analyse quantitative energy data is original and provides promising opportunities to understand the significance of residential practices regarding actual energy consumption.

Energy Savings Through Hot and Cold Aisle Containment Configurations for Air Cooled Servers in Data Centers

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Schmidt ◽  
Aparna Vallury ◽  
Madhusudan Iyengar
Keyword(s):  
Energy Efficiency ◽  
Data Center ◽  
Air Conditioning ◽  
Data Centers ◽  
Energy Savings ◽  
Green Technologies ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Hot Air ◽  
Type Data ◽  
Cold Aisle Containment

The increased focus on green technologies and energy efficiency coupled with the insatiable desire of IT equipment customers for more performance has driven manufacturers to deploy energy efficient technologies in the data centers. This paper describes a technique to achieve significant energy savings by preventing the cold and hot air streams within the data center from mixing. More specifically, techniques will be described that will separate the cool supply air to the server racks and exhaust hot air that returns to the air conditioning units. This separation can be achieved by three types of containment systems — cold aisle containment, hot aisle containment, and server rack exhaust chimneys. The advantages and disadvantages of each technique will be outlined. To show the potential for energy efficiency improvements a case study in deploying a cold aisle containment solution for a 8944 ft2 data center will be presented. This study will show that 59% of the energy required for the computer room air conditioning (CRAC) units used in a traditional open type data center could be saved.

scholarly journals A Dynamic Thermal-Allocation Solution to the Complex Economic Benefit for a Data Center

Complexity ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Hui Liu ◽  
Wenyu Song ◽  
Tianqi Jin ◽  
Zhiyong Wu ◽  
Fusheng Yan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Energy Consumption ◽  
Data Center ◽  
Economic Benefit ◽  
Data Centers ◽  
Economic Benefits ◽  
Dynamic Data ◽  
Workload Management ◽  
Profit Model ◽  
Thermal Distribution ◽  
Workload Allocation

Data centers, which provide computing services and gain profits, are indispensable to every city in the information era. They offer computation and storage while consuming energy and generate thermal discharges. To maximize the economic benefit, the existing research studies on the data center workload management mostly leverage the dynamical power model, i.e., the power-aware workload allocation. Nevertheless, we argue that for the complex relationship between the economic benefit and so many attributes, such as computation, energy consumption, thermal distribution, cooling, and equipment life, the thermal distribution dominates the others. Thus, thermal-aware workload allocation is more efficient. From the perspective of economic benefits, we propose a mathematical model for thermal distribution of a data center and study which workload distribution could determinately change the thermal distribution in the dynamic data center runtime, so as to reduce the cost and improve the economic benefits under the guarantee of service provisioning. By solving the thermal environment evaluation indexes, RHI (Return Heat Index) and RTI (Return Temperature Index), as well as heat dissipation models, we define quantitative models for the economic analysis such as energy consumption model for the busy servers and cooling, energy price model, and the profit model of data centers. Numerical simulation results validate our propositions and show that the average temperature of the data center reaches the best values, and the local hot spots are avoided effectively in various situations. As a conclusion, our studies contribute to the thermal management of the dynamic data center runtime for better economic benefits.

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