1. Commodity Data Center Design
James Hamilton

2. Containerized Products
Nortel Steel Enclosure
Containerized telecom equipment
Caterpillar
Portable Power
Rackable Systems Concentro
1,152 Systems in 40’ (9,600 cores/3.5 PB)
Datatainer
ZoneBox
Rackable Systems Container
Cooling Model
Google WillPower
Will Whitted
Petabox Internet Archive
Brewster Kahle
Sun Project Black Box
242 systems in 20’
1/21/2007

3. Cooling, Feedback, & Air Handling Gains
Verari
Intel
Tighter control of air-flow increased delta-T and overall system efficiency
Expect increased use of special enclosures, variable speed fans, and warm machine rooms
CRACs closer to servers for tighter temp control feedback loop
Container takes one step further with very little air in motion, variable speed fans, & tight feedback between CRAC and load
Intel
1/21/2007

4. Shipping Container as Data Center Module
Contains network gear, compute, storage, & cooling
Just plug in power, network, & chilled water
Increased cooling efficiency
Variable water & air flow
Better air flow management (higher delta-T)
80% air handling power reductions (Rackable Systems)
Bring your own data center shell
Just central networking, power, cooling, security & admin center
Can be stacked 3 to 5 high
Less regulatory issues (e.g. no building permit)
Avoids (for now) building floor space taxes
Political/Social issues
USA PATRIOT act concerns & regional restrictions
Move resources closer to customer (CDN mini-centers)
Single customs clearance on import
Single FCC compliance certification
Distributed, incremental fast built mini-centers
1/21/2007

5. Manufacturing & H/W Admin. Savings
Factory racking, stacking & packing much more efficient
Robotics and/or inexpensive labor
Avoid layers of packaging
Systems->packing box->pallet->container
Materials cost and wastage and labor at customer site
Data Center power & cooling expensive consulting contracts
Data centers are still custom crafted rather than prefab units
Move skill set to module manufacturer who designs power & cooling once
Installation design to meet module power, network, & cooling specs
More space efficient
Power densities in excess of 1250 W/sq ft
Rooftop or parking lot installation acceptable (with security)
Stack 3 to 5 high
Service-Free
H/W admin contracts can exceed 25% of systems cost
Sufficient redundancy that it just degrades over time
At end of service, return for remanufacture & recycling
20% to 50% of systems outages caused by Admin error (A. Brown & D. Patterson)
1/21/2007

6. Systems & Power Density
Estimating datacenter power density difficult (15+ year horizon)
Power is 40% of DC costs
Power + Mechanical: 55% of cost
Shell is roughly 15% of DC cost
Cheaper to waste floor than power
Typically 100 to 200 W/sq ft
Rarely as high as 350 to 600 W/sq ft
Modular DC eliminates impossible shell to power trade-off
Add modules until power is absorbed
480VAC to container
High efficiency DC distribution within
High voltage to rack can save >5% over 208VAC
Over 20% of entire DC costs is in power redundancy
Batteries able to supply up to 12 min at some facilities
N+2 generation at over $2M each
Instead, use more smaller, cheaper data centers
Eliminate redundant power & bulk of shell costs
Resource equalization
1/21/2007

7. Where do you Want to Compute Today?
Slides posted soon to:
10/08/2007