Understanding the True Total Cost of Ownership of Water Cooling for Data Centers

Author(s):  
Dustin W. Demetriou ◽  
Vinod Kamath ◽  
Howard Mahaney

The generation-to-generation IT performance and density demands continue to drive innovation in data center cooling technologies. For many applications, the ability to efficiently deliver cooling via traditional chilled air cooling approaches has become inadequate. Water cooling has been used in data centers for more than 50 years to improve heat dissipation, boost performance and increase efficiency. While water cooling can undoubtedly have a higher initial capital cost, water cooling can be very cost effective when looking at the true lifecycle cost of a water cooled data center. This study aims at addressing how one should evaluate the true total cost of ownership for water cooled data centers by considering the combined capital and operational cost for both the IT systems and the data center facility. It compares several metrics, including return-on-investment for three cooling technologies: traditional air cooling, rack-level cooling using rear door heat exchangers and direct water cooling via cold plates. The results highlight several important variables, namely, IT power, data center location, site electric utility cost, and construction costs and how each of these influence the total cost of ownership of water cooling. The study further looks at implementing water cooling as part of a new data center construction project versus a retrofit or upgrade into an existing data center facility.

2016 ◽  
Vol 138 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dustin W. Demetriou ◽  
Vinod Kamath ◽  
Howard Mahaney

The generation-to-generation information technology (IT) performance and density demands continue to drive innovation in data center cooling technologies. For many applications, the ability to efficiently deliver cooling via traditional chilled air cooling approaches has become inadequate. Water cooling has been used in data centers for more than 50 years to improve heat dissipation, boost performance, and increase efficiency. While water cooling can undoubtedly have a higher initial capital cost, water cooling can be very cost effective when looking at the true life cycle cost of a water-cooled data center. This study aims at addressing how one should evaluate the true total cost of ownership (TCO) for water-cooled data centers by considering the combined capital and operational cost for both the IT systems and the data center facility. It compares several metrics, including return-on-investment for three cooling technologies: traditional air cooling, rack-level cooling using rear door heat exchangers, and direct water cooling (DWC) via cold plates. The results highlight several important variables, namely, IT power, data center location, site electric utility cost, and construction costs and how each of these influences the TCO of water cooling. The study further looks at implementing water cooling as part of a new data center construction project versus a retrofit or upgrade into an existing data center facility.


2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-117
Author(s):  
Ajay Ahuja ◽  
Vinayshil Gautam

Data Centers are sub organizations within an IT organization and form an integral part of e-enabled services infrastructure. Their effectiveness is essential for effectiveness of overall IT organization leading to efficient and effective delivery of e-services. Data Center organizations aim for Organizational Effectiveness. Many factors and measures can contribute to Organizational Effectiveness of Data Centers. This paper presents some of the findings from a research study on “Select aspects of Organizational Effectiveness of Data Centers”. As an outcome of this study, amongst other measures, Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) was derived as a critical measure for effective Data Centers. Lower TCO leads to cost effective Data Centers, leading to overall effectiveness. In this paper, we briefly introduce various measures of Data Centers’ Organizational Effectiveness and present a detailed analysis of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) as a key measure of Data Centers’ Organizational Effectiveness. We also present various factors contributing to reduced TCO and a comparison between the factors contributing to TCO for Government and Corporate Data Centers.


2011 ◽  
pp. 143-216
Author(s):  
Stephen J. Andriole

Here’s what we’ll discuss here: • Measurement – or do you know where your computers, processes and skeletons are? Without benchmark data it’s impossible to converge anything: measure or fly blind. • The standardization of your computing and communications technology. If people want to buy non-standard, non-supported hardware or software make them pay for their own support. Watch three infrastructure levels: access, coordination and resource, and measure everything so you know what works and what doesn’t, and what things cost. • Outsourcing, or the love/hate relationship you should have with the people inside that are good/bad and the people you hire from the outside who are good/bad/expensive/cost-effective, and why you should outsource only to partners willing to share risk. • Funding, or figuring out who pays for what at your company, and dealing with the inevitable conflicts between the “enterprise” and business units. • Return-on-investment (ROI) and total-cost-of-ownership (TCO), the “I-see-no-compelling-reason-at-all-to-fund-this-project” twins – who really are your friends (so long as they stay on their medication).


Author(s):  
Kelly Blynn ◽  
John Attanucci

Although transit buses have a relatively small impact on greenhouse gas emissions, they have a larger impact on urban air quality, have commercially available electric models, and have historically commercialized clean technologies that enabled deployment in other heavy-duty vehicles. This paper investigates what factors affect transit agencies’ decisions to go beyond electric bus pilots to larger scale deployments, with the goal of identifying strategies to enable an accelerated transition to an electrified fleet. This mixed methods analysis utilized quantitative total cost of ownership analysis and qualitative interviews to study the barriers and drivers of electric bus investment for transit fleets in three case study states: California, Kentucky, and Massachusetts. A total cost of ownership analysis estimated electric buses are already more cost-effective than diesel buses in many agency contexts, but are sensitive to key parameters such as annual mileage, fossil fuel costs, and electricity tariffs and supporting policies that vary widely. Though multiple agencies in California reported planning to fully electrify their fleets, outside California where less supportive policies exist, fewer agencies reported planning to procure additional electric buses, primarily owing to high first cost and undesirable tradeoffs with maintaining transit service levels. Interview respondents also reported other substantial barriers such as oversubscribed grant programs, charging infrastructure costs, electricity costs, and additional operational complexity, suggesting a need for multiple complementary policies to overcome these barriers and ensure agencies can transition to a new technology without affecting transit service.


Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 3262
Author(s):  
Anders Grauers ◽  
Sven Borén ◽  
Oscar Enerbäck

Without experiences of electric buses, public transport authorities and bus operators have faced questions about how to implement them in a cost-effective way. Simple cost modelling cannot show how costs for different types of electric buses differ between different routes and timetables. Tools (e.g., HASTUS, PtMS, and optibus) which can analyse such details are complicated, time consuming to use, and provide insufficient insights into the mechanisms that influence the cost. This paper therefore proposes a method for how to calculate total cost of ownership, for different types of electric buses, in a way which can predict how the cost varies based on route and timetable. The method excludes factors which cause minor cost variations in an almost random manor, in order to better show the fundamental mechanisms influencing different costs. The method will help in finding ways to reduce the cost and help to define a few cases which deserve a deep analysis with more complete tools. Testing of the method in a Swedish context showed that the results are in line with other theoretical and practical studies, and how the total cost of ownership can vary depending on the variables.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Igor W. S. Falcão ◽  
Paulo H. A. Pereira ◽  
Rafael F. Vieira ◽  
Antonio C. Oliveira Jr ◽  
Daniel S. Souza ◽  
...  

A computação em nuvem, além de promover um modelo de armazena- mento e processamento de dados compartilhados, fortalece o potencial técnico-econômico do CSP (Cloud Service Provider), apresentando inúmeras possibilidades no âmbito computacional. Neste trabalho, é proposto um modelo de custo e um cenário de avaliação com base no TCO (Total Cost of Ownership), avaliando o contexto, aquisição e operação de equipamentos para implantação de infraestruturas em nuvem. Dessa forma, foi possı́vel especificar os principais ativos de infraestruturas tı́picas de nuvem e sobretudo, avaliar seu desempenho financeiro a partir de projeções de custos considerando aspectos que inferem diretamente no retorno de investimentos de um Data Center.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Avery ◽  
David Morris ◽  
Tony Morgan ◽  
Greg Manson ◽  
David Gillespie

Abstract As energy markets evolve, the supply mix diversifies, and the push for a net zero energy system accelerates, the competitiveness of oil and gas has become increasingly important. A focus upon the total cost of ownership across the field lifecycle has begun to emerge as a driving factor within subsea oil and gas project evaluation, with greater emphasis on cost-effective operations. Acknowledging that the life of field begins within the engineering, procurement, construction, and installation phase of a project allows the operator to influence through life activities to greatest effect and achieve a balanced optimization of capital and operational expenditure. Intervention is a key activity for maintaining and optimizing a subsea wells performance, from initial installation, through the producing life, and finally during decommissioning. As completion technologies continue to evolve, opportunities emerge for optimization of the systems used to intervene upon subsea wells. One of the largest areas of opportunity is the simplification of a technique to permit operations from a more efficient rig or vessel. This paper explores some of the solutions available today which allow historically rig based activities to be performed from vessels. These include riser based intervention systems, hydraulic intervention solutions, well abandonment technologies, and subsea workover control systems. An evaluation of the presented techniques against alternative approaches is shared, to aid the reader in selecting the optimal solution for an application. Guidance is provided to assist in identifying the key decision criteria, complete with the capabilities and limitations of each solution. The conclusions identify that designing a subsea production system with the flexibility to accommodate life of field activities can deliver reduced total cost of ownership to operators. A key part of this is consideration of optimized intervention techniques which can leverage simpler vessels for deployment and operation. By reducing the vessel specification, broad benefits can be realized including reduced asset day rate, reduced operational duration, and increased asset availability globally. This permits improved scheduling and reduced mobilization costs, in some cases enabling intervention activities which otherwise would not be economical.


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