Data Center Raised Floor and Cooling System

Data Center Executives are addressing the cooling infrastructure demands with a full line of airflow management and in-floor cooling solutions. The continued adoption of high density equipment, virtualization and cloud computing strategies requires the cooling infrastructure of a data center to be capable of adapting to high and often variable heat loads while offering superior energy efficiency.

There are line of in-floor cooling products for raised floor data centers can nearly eliminate by-pass air and save significant energy. Using directional airflow and variable-air-volume dampers, the data center can instantly react to any variation in utilization to match cooling with the heat load at the rack level. Some data center also provide fan assisted airflow to eliminate hot spots or implement high-density equipment in a current raised floor facilities without significant capital investment.

In addition, a full line of containment systems and air sealing grommets is designed to help reduce by-pass airflow, improve energy efficiency and increase data center capacity. More information can be found below.

Electronically controlled variable air volume damper used to adjusts the amount of air to meet the specific needs of the rack it services.

Fan assist module is designed to provide a blast of cooling through an individual airflow panel. This powerful solution is ideal for solving the toughest hot spots in a data center.

Grate panels the airflow angle toward the equipment achieving a 93% Total Air Capture (TAC) rate by a standard server rack.

Full line panels have the unmatched ability to handle heat density needs of the most demanding mission critical facilities.

Blade damper allows the user infinite airflow adjustability when it comes to airflow from any airflow panel.

Seal a variety of openings in the aisle, blocking bypass airflow and maximizing cooling performance.

The rack shield isolation system is designed to capture subfloor supply and dedicate it to the computer thermal load, thereby ensuring that cold supply air will not spill across the raised floor.

Hot and cold aisle containment, Partition, Strip Doors, Retracting Roofs, Hinged and Sliding Doors all work together to create the perfect containment solution.

The CRAC Hood Extension is a ceiling return duct that connects the top of the CRAC unit directly to a ceiling return plenum greatly increasing cooling capacity and efficiency by capturing hot exhaust air and channeling it directly into the CRAC unit.

Green Data Center Engineer Certification Program - Organized by The Society of Operations Engineers (SOE, Hong Kong Region)

The Green Data Center Engineer Certification Program
4 – 20 July 2012

Introduction

In the 2011-12 Policy Address and the 2012-13 Budget, the Government will thoroughly support the conversion of industrial buildings into data centers and the accommodation of data centers in Tseung Kwan O which attract capital investment from global institutions. SOE, who expertizes in mission critical facility / services, supports the policy and first launches a comprehensive program for Green Data Centre in Hong Kong.

The certified program provides a technical knowledge and “green theory” for engineers who are involved in creating sustainable and energy efficient data centre (E&M) / plants or exploiting the role of telecommunication in helping deliver green operation and business practices to other areas of organization such as Tendering & Procurement. It also introduces other efficiency metrics and international standards such as PUE/DCiE (The Green Grid Energy Measuring Tools), Carbon Footprint, TPL accounting, end-to-end life cycle cost, TCO, etc.

Program Outline

(1) Introduction of Green Data Centre
(2) Concepts and trends of Green Data Centre
(3) SWOT analysis of Green Data Centre
(4) Green elements and Risk Analysis of Green Data Centre
(5) Green Implementation Plan
(6) Building a Green Data Centre team
(7) Evaluation life cycle cost for Green Data Centre
 

Speakers:     Ir C.K. Chan, CEng, CEnv, FSOE, FIplantE, MIET, MHKIE, CSME, REW H0 C0

                     Ir Herman Poon, CEng, Eur. Ing., CITP, MBCS, MHKIE

Venue:          Society of Operations Engineers (Hong Kong Region)

                     Unit 2, 3/F, Winsum Industrial Centre,

                     588-592, Castle Peak Road, Cheung Sha Wan, Kowloon, Hong Kong

Date:            4, 6, 9, 13, 16, 18, 20 July 2012 (Monday, Wednesday and Friday)

Time:            7:00pm - 10:00pm

 

 

Registration Fee and Certification Detail 

 

HK$4,000 (Member) and HK$4,500 (Non-Member) including course materials, course assessment and certification

 "Green Data Centre Engineer" certificate will be awarded for those participants who completed the course assessment OR CPD certificate will be issued to students with attendance over 70%. Green Data Centre Engineers are eligible to enroll higher level courses by SOE.

 Please contact Ms. Connie Mui at 3188 0062 or email: connie@soe.org.hk OR download the pdf file for registration -  http://www.soe.org.hk/pdf/11062012/11062012a.pdf

Buildings Energy Efficiency Ordinance

Buildings Energy Efficiency Ordinance in Hong Kong Enchances the Energy Efficiency in Buildings

The Building Energy Efficiency Ordinance (Cap. 610) will come into full operation on 21 September 2012. The purpose of this ordinance is to enchance the energy efficiency in buildings by means of regulating the building services installations including lighting, electrical, air-conditioning and lift & escalator installations of prescribed buildings in new construction and in major retrofitting works to comply with the minimum energy efficiency standards and requirements specified in Building Energy Code (BEC). Moreover, the Ordinance also requires the central building services installation in commercial building and in a portion of a composite building that is for commercial use to conduct the energy audit in accordance with Energy Audit Code (EAC) in Hong Kong.

Data centers consume large amounts of energy and require many investments of significant financial resources to continue operations. To facilitate data center professionals fulfill the requirements of the Ordinance, Strategic Media Asia (SMA) has recently launch a series of technical seminar in Energy Efficient Data center and Green Data Center Design which cover general data center design standards, TIA-942 and Tier, Facilities Management (E&M) System, EU Green Data Center Design Standard, Data Center Cost and Energy Management. For more training and event detail, please visit www.stmedia-asia.com/events.html

 

Direct Current (DC) for Data Center: You can save more

It was also the year that direct current (DC) took a back seat to alternating current (AC) after Niagara Falls Power Company chose AC transmission for its power plant. Although we live in an AC-dominated world, DC seems poised for a comeback, particularly in data centers. Facebook adopted a DC architecture in its Prineville, Ore., data center. SAP spent $128,000 retrofitting a data center at its offices in Palo Alto, Calif., to rely on DC power. In 2010 it cut SAP’s energy bills by $24,000 per year.

ABB, the Swiss-Swedish conglomerate, bought a controlling interest last year in Validus DC Systems, which specializes in DC data center equipment. ABB also opened a factory in North Carolina to produce HVDC (high voltage DC) equipment for delivering power from solar and offshore wind farms to the grid. The Tres Amigas “superstation” will rely heavily on HVDC.

General Electric, meanwhile, bought Lineage Power, which produces DC equipment, and it has talked about using DC to power mining shovels and other heavy-duty equipment.

Nextek Power Systems and the EMmerge Alliance are also promoting DC as a way to cut power in buildings.

Behind the DC drive

What’s driving it? Although AC became the standard for electronic transmission, DC didn’t disappear. It just hid. Servers, large numbers of electric motors, batteries, even ships and airplanes run on DC. Solar panels produce DC power. Wind turbines can produce AC or DC power, but the extreme variability of wind power means that electricity generated by turbines has to pass through battery banks before it gets to the grid. As a result, wind farms are effectively DC.

The landline telephone system runs on DC too, notes Brian Fortenberry, a program manager at the Electric Power Research Institute.

To solve the mismatch, a whole industry of AC-DC converters has been developed. National Semiconductor sells billions of dollars’ worth of chips to convert power. Inverters in the solar industry exist to convert DC from solar panels to AC that can run on the wires in your home.

In data centers, the AC-DC gymnastics top the charts. Typically, AC from the grid has to be stepped down in voltage so it can be routed safely in building equipment. Lower-voltage AC then gets converted to DC so it can go to an uninterruptable power supply (UPS). DC power from the UPS then gets converted to AC so it can go over the wires in the building. Then it gets converted back to DC. Usually five conversions, or steps, downward take place.

By converting grid AC at the door of a data center to medium-voltage DC or converting stepped-down AC to DC at the last possible moment, a data center can cut utility bills by 10 to 20 percent or more, according to Trent Waterhouse, the VP of marketing for power electronics at General Electric.

Validus and others have also eliminated some of the technological hurdles involved in transmitting via DC, namely the monster-sized copper cables.

The same dynamics work in buildings. In a retail establishment, DC power from solar panels could go directly to DC-powered LED lights with not-intermediate conversions that sap energy, according to Nextek. Perhaps not coincidentally, Redwood Systems, the lighting networking company, touts that its technology is actually an example of DC networking.

More savings comes in real estate. DC data centers require 25 percent to 40 percent less square footage than their AC counterparts, largely because computer equipment can connect directly to backup batteries.

In a hypothetical example, a 2.5-megawatt data center power module in the AC world might need 7,295 square feet, Ronald Ranaldi, the VP of sales at Validus, told me last year. An equivalent DC power module might occupy only 5,102 square feet, a savings of 2,193 square feet. What’s more, a single data center might consist of several 2.5-megawatt modules.

“Real estate is often greater than the energy savings,” says Ranaldi. “In large, green field data centers, you are literally eliminating buildings.”

DC won’t take over the world. And not everyone is sold. Google is not taking DC for its data centers in part because of the cost that would be involved in retrofitting their existing architecture. But it seems that an idea that was current when Grover Cleveland was in the White House and Japan was just adopting the Gregorian calendar could make a comeback.


Adopted from http://gigaom.com/cleantech/

ISO 50001 and Data Centers

ISO 50001:2011, Energy management systems – Requirements with guidance for use, is a voluntary International Standard developed by ISO (International Organization for Standardization). ISO 50001 gives organizations the requirements for energy management systems (EnMS).ISO 50001 provides benefits for organizations large and small, in both public and private sectors, in manufacturing and services, in all regions of the world.ISO 50001 will establish a framework for industrial plants ; commercial, institutional, and governmental facilities ; and entire organizations to manage energy. Targeting broad applicability across national economic sectors, it is estimated that the standard could influence up to 60 % of the world’s energy use.

The ISO 50001 Energy Management System was established by the International Standards Organization (ISO) Energy Management Committee (ISO/PC242), and was announced in the second quarter of this year. The Fab 12 Phase 4 data center which completed certification provides data and control systems for factory automation, and supports both manufacturing and R&D. Adoption of the ISO 50001 Energy Management System is expected to reduce the data center’s power consumption by 8%, conserving 2.21 million kilowatt-hours of electricity and eliminating 1,350 tons of carbon emissions per year. In addition to upgrading existing data centers, TSMC also plans to apply ISO 50001 standards to future data centers and implement the most up-to-date energy-saving designs. TSMC estimates that the company can conserve 59.62 million kilowatt-hours of electricity and eliminate 36,490 tons of carbon emissions per year.

Adopted from http://www.greenm3.com

Increase in Power Bill Raise The Importance of Energy Efficient Data Center

In Hong Kong, China Light and Power (CLP) has asked the government for permission to raise the Power Bill by 9.2 percent next year in 2012, whereas Hongkong Electric (HKE) demanded a 2.64 to 6.08 percent fee hike. The increases requested by both power companies far exceed the rate of inflation. They will add considerably living expenses to residental customers and operation costs to businesses which require large amount of power and energy consumptions.

Adopted from South China Morning Post (SCMP)

Data centers, which come in different sizes and provide mission critical functions for most businesses, consume large amounts of energy and require many investments of significant financial resources to continue operations. Despite of the high demand of data centre in Hong Kong, many organizations are looking for new ways of doing more with less, reducing IT budgets or curtailing the incidental costs associated with data center operations and even expansion.

Saving Energy Consumption and Power Bill

Data center efficiencies can be attained through increasing compute densities, creating cold aisle containment systems or more effective use of outside air, but the key component over time is to have an easily understood metric to gauge data center efficiency, and how much improvement is taking place.

Strategic Media Asia (SMA), which is vendor independent and accredited by British computer Society (BCs), provides data centre and IT professionals with top level understanding of best practices in energy efficient data centre from a series of certificate courses and training seminars focusing on international green standard, financial and regulatory, facilities management, hardware management and software / system networks of Data Centre.
Completion of the accredited courses and examinations will be awarded 3 certificates granted by BCS:

Foundation Certificate in Green IT
Intermediate Certificate in EU Code of Conduct in Data Centre
Intermediate Certificate in Energy & Cost Management in Data Centre

The 3 certificates equips you and your team and data centre to apply for
Certified Energy Efficient Datacentre Award (CEEDA)

We aim at teaching several aspects: (1) Data Centre Utilization (2) Data Centre Facilities (3) Cooling (4) Power Equipment (5) Data Centre Cost Savings (6) Monitoring. Each unit is principally assessed by examinations that lead you through all the steps needed to arrive at a baseline of a modern green data centre and energy saving.

Furthermore, we bring you a unique opportunity to learn from our lecturers and apply the knowledge immediately to your own facility with assistance from our experts. An additional on-site audit services for your own data centre with full audit report can help you achieving the criteria of best practice design and energy efficient in data centre after the series of training programmes.


Target Audience

Data Centre and Facilities Managers
Data Centre Operators
Data Centre Design Consultants
Data Centre Technicians and Engineers
Sales Engineers from OEM Vendors
CSR / Environmental Champions in technology departments
IT Purchasers (Hardware & Software)
IT Architects and Solution Consultants

For more information, please contact (852) 3796 3026 or download our Training Event's Brochure.

PUE & Cost Savings - Why go Green?

PUE and other efficiency measures on data centre are useful, but we more likely chasing the money now!
Efficient data centres have always made an effort to meet commercial needs – but the economic side of the movement may soon eclipse the “green” side, environmental issues and corporate image.

The move to the cloud is driving this. “Cloud-based services [like Facebook and Google], have the ability to build efficient data centres in locations where there is cheap power, and to highly utilise the IT equipment,” said Mark Monroe, executive director of the The Green Grid. “Their primary function is to drive the cost of a transaction down as low as it can be.”

The Green Grid has just had its annual European conference, over two days in Paris and London, and is reacting to this world, where it is all about the lowest cost for transactions. “Amazon can deliver a CPU-hour, for 10 cents,” said Monroe. He would have delivered the same measure for $3.75, two years ago, when he worked on Sun’s sustainable data centres.

It’s more about the money than the tech

The Green Grid has been known for the PUE measure of effiency, which has been picked up by various interantional bodies, and is regularly quoted for any new efficient data centre development.
At first sight, its other work looks like a continuation of that sort of effort, providing yet more ways for centres to measure their performance and compare themselves, including the still-under-development CUE and WUE measures of carbon-usage and water-usage respectively.

But alongside these measures, the group is coming up with a wide range of other material, which is increasingly designed to look hard-nosed, practical and, let’s face it, commercial.

Saving money, not PUE

The latest Green Grid White Paper surveyed members’ use of economisers, the cooling system which offers free air cooling and replaces the use of chillers.  Economisers trumpeted as a way to improve PUE. According to the survey, however, they do improve efficiency, but have no discernible effect on PUE.

“There was no statistically significant difference between the PUE reported by those who use economizers and by those who do not,” the report found.

They are taking off rapidly amongst Grid members, however, they save money. Around half the members surveyed are using economisers, and they are using them for almost all the hours allowed by the local climates (which turns out to be around 4,000 hours). They are doing so, because they are saving money – around 20 percent of the energy bill, with a payback time of around 20 months, according to Monroe.

Training program and Best Practices in Energy and Cost Savings for Data Centre

The British Computer Society is now launching an advanced certificate in Energy and Cost Savings in Data Centre. Strategic Media Asia is an Approved Training Provider in Hong Kong which is qualified to deliver such professional certificate training programme with Chartered Engineers (CEng). For more information and detailed syllabus, please contact (852) 3796 3026 or download brochure here.

The First Well-structured Green Data Centre Trainings in Hong Kong

Get ready to become a data centre energy specialist and prepare for an international data centre award in energy efficiency - CEEDA

Today, many organizations are looking for new ways of doing more with less, reducing IT budgets or curtailing the incidental costs associated with data center expansions. And data center managers need to focus on creating efficient operating environments to augment the life of existing data centers. Data center efficiencies can be attained through increasing compute densities, creating cold aisle containment systems or more effective use of outside air, but the key component over time is to have an easily understood metric to gauge data center efficiency, and how much improvement is taking place.

StrategicMedia Asia (SMA) provides any data centre and IT professionals with top level understanding of best practices in energy efficient data centre management from a series of 3 accredited certificate courses and training seminars (below) which focus on international green standard, financial and regulatory, facilities management, hardware management and software / system networks of Data Centre.

 Data Centre Facility and Infrastructure Engineering

The section is fundamental for executive and data centre owners, managers and operators to enrich their basic knowledge beyond the industry jargons and terminology. We provide a general introduction of the critical infrastructure system that supports typical Data Centres and environments. It also prepares you to fully understand the main components that facilitate Data Centre design & build, operation and management.

Green IT

The training provides a fundamental qualification for ICT engineers who are involved in creating sustainable and energy efficient data centre or exploiting the role of IT in helping deliver sustainable ICT operation and more efficient business practices to other areas of the organization. It also introduces different Green Standards such as ISO 14000 Series (Energy Measurement), Energy Star and PUE / DCiE (From The Green Grid).

Energy and Cost Management in Data Centre

This section explicitly deals with an organization's strategy as it relates to the effective use of energy by software, ICT systems and support infrastructure (mechanical and electrical systems) within the data centre. It will impart an understanding of the use and cost of energy in data centres with an appreciation of the contributing factors, awareness of best practices at a high-level and strategies to control and manage energy consumption and cost in data centres. Key area include:

Cost & Energy Monitoring and Reporting in Data Centre

How to Manage Energy and Cost

Interdisciplinary Teams’ Interactions and Communications

Energy Management and Energy Performance Efficiency

Efficiency Metrics

Metering

Reporting Energy and Carbon e.g. for CRC

Reporting Cost - The challenge of per cost accounting

The Roles for -

Estate Management, Facilities Management, Data Centre Manager,

IT Management, IT Analysts, Business Management

EU Code of Conduct in Data Centre

The training will impart an understanding of the purpose of the EU Code of Conduct and how to apply the Code's best practices at a high-level as well as helping you to develop a common language around energy efficiency. Key area include:

The reason of implementing best practice in the Code of Conduct

The bodies who use the EU Code of Conduct

Energy Measurement and Metrics

Best Practice - Interactions and Interdependencies

Best Practice - In detail

- Data Centre Utilization, Management and Planning

- IT Equipment and Services

- Cooling

- Data Centre Power Equipment

- Other Data Centre Equipment

- Data Centre Building

- Monitoring

- Practices to become minimum expected

- Items under consideration