Data Centre Power Trends UKNOF 4 – 19 th May 2006 Marcus Hopwood Internet Facilitators Ltd

The bad news Demand is up Price is up Oversupply is running out

The good news Hardware manufacturers (finally) realise power is an issue Energy policy high on government’s agenda IFL opening a new data centre

Demand is up

Average power per rack increasing Higher power servers Higher density deployments High usage increasing faster Blade servers

Power usage in IFL data centres Air cooling limit?

Typical customer usage

Power challenges Available supply Limits on supply from grid Delay on increasing supply Cooling the data centre Chilled air has maximum capacity Increasing use of water cooled racks

Price is up

DTI energy price review

Supply problems Electricity prices rising much faster than RPI Volatility in electricity supply marketplace High cost of new supplies Long lead time for new supplies

Real cost of electricity Power at rack10A2.3kW Losses (UPS etc) 1A0.23kW Cooling3.6A0.828kW Total14.6A3.358kW

Real cost of electricity 4p6p8p 10A Rack£1176£1765£2353

Oversupply is running out

Oversupply running out London data centres filling up IFL in Manchester full since October 2005 Telecity in Manchester full

Hardware manufacturers respond

HP “Server and data center power management: Our work proposed temperature-aware scheduling, hardware- software co-ordination to enforce power budgets, and new blade designs for lower power. Our optimizations are individually successful in reducing system power by %.”

IBM “The need for more performance from computer equipment in data centers has driven the power consumed to levels that are straining thermal management in the centers.”

Sun Microsystems

AMD

Intel “Silicon and Platform Innovation—New materials, manufacturing techniques, and architectural approaches (such as multicore processors) will deliver substantial improvements in performance per watt over the next few years. This will enable ongoing increases in datacenter compute density, without driving up power and thermal requirements.”

Government energy policy

Why are electricity prices so high? Generating capacity shortfall of 7-16GW by 2015 Equivalent to about 20% of current capacity Uncertainty about security of supply

Government agenda Energy review due by end of July Nuclear power “back on the agenda with a vengeance” (Tony Blair, 16 th May 2006)

Possible price review OFGEM consulted the market regarding price review Initial decision that review not justified (but not ruled out) Commitment to work with business to resolve issue

New data centre

Reynolds House Additional 13,000 sq ft (gross) 2 MW power 200 watts / sq ft Average 15 – 20 Amps / rack (3.5 – 4.5 kW)

Marcus Hopwood Internet Facilitators Ltd