Although I think there are a few engineering flaws in the post, the design and concept are stable.

Using natural resources to cool your server room is clearly the next logical step in making server rooms green.

Now, I am not suggesting that you go and implement this type of hack in your company’s server room.  At the very least, this action would get you demoted and sent to the basement where you could display your very own red stapler.  At the worst, you could find your self celebrating the beginning of 2011 looking for new career opportunities.

What you should take from this in the near future is that the design and implementation of server rooms heating and cooling system will be using natural resources like the cold air from outside.  What will make this achievable and- more importantly- practical is the ability to monitor and react to environmental changes.  That is where the technology used in today’s temperature probes will shine.

So, until the future comes, I suggest using your very own Ravica environmental sensor probes to monitor the temperature and humidity in your server room, and to follow these five steps to protect hardware in your data center.

- Jimmy D

The number one tip is raising the acceptable temperature in your server room.   Old school IT wisdom says to keep server rooms between 55°-60°F, however more recent research has stated that equipment can operate without any risk of damage at much higher temperature thresholds, more in the 70°-79°F range.   Given that a conservative estimate of energy savings due to lower cooling costs is 4% savings in energy cost per degree Fahrenheit that the thermostat is raised, dollars saved can add up fast.

If you are currently using a Ravica Sensor Probe to monitor and control the temperature in your server room or data center, you can easily adjust the warning thresholds in your web-interface. Within your online Ravica control panel, click on the Sensors Tab and adjust the High and Low thresholds to reflect the new temperature norms.

So go ahead, raise the temperature bar in your server rooms, and then keep track of the energy bills to find out how much money is staying in your pocket.  You never know, it may be enough to reinvest in some new equipment, update your network monitoring software, or hire a new employee to get those business development ideas off the shelf and making some profits.

Yahoo last month announced plans to build its greenest data center in Lockport, N.Y. Yahoo co-founder and Chief Yahoo David Filo explains in his blog that the data center will be designed to use 100% outside air to cool the servers. And the resource used to power the data center and the servers will be the renewable hydroelectric power from the Niagara Falls.    
Filo writes that the data center design will have an annualized average PUE (power usage effectiveness) of 1.1 or better. The company’s other facilities in Washington are powered by wind and hydroelectric sources. Outside air (or what the industry terms “free cooling”) is used for cooling most of the year, helping Yahoo to reduce energy consumption by 40% to 50%.

Search rival Google uses free cooling almost year round in its data center in Belgium, where the average summer temperature is between 66°F and 71°F (19°C and 22°C), writes Data Center Knowledge. That temperature range falls way below the 80°F (27°C) temperature that Google maintains for its data centers, adds Data Center Knowledge.

You’ll recall last week in this blog that our friend, Chuck Cahoon, solutions architect at CDW, recommended that the ambient temperature range in data centers should be between 68°F to 75°F (20°C to 24°C). Companies that have set the temperature higher than 75°F say they see savings spent on air conditioning as a result, according a separate Data Center Knowledge article. That article cites Mark Monroe of Sun Microsystems as saying that data centers can save 4% in energy costs for every increased degree in baseline temperature.

The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) in its 2008 ASHRAE Environmental Guidelines for Datacom Equipment expanded its recommended operating envelope. The low-end and high-end temperatures in its 2008 guidelines are 64.4°F (18°C) and 80.6° (27°C), respectively. This differs from its 2004 guidelines for low-end and high-end temperatures of 68°F and 77°F, respectively.

However, Data Center Knowledge warns that raising the temperature could leave companies with less time to recover from a cooling failure. Operating at a higher temperature should only be done by customers that have a high understanding of the cooling conditions in their facility, Data Center Knowledge adds.

The ASHRAE guidelines also note other issues for data centers operating at higher temperatures:

• Gains in energy efficiency could be offset by the data center equipment having to work harder to compensate for the higher inlet air temperatures.
• The higher temperatures could cause condensation on the refrigerated coils of refrigerated cooling systems, requiring data centers to humidify to replace the lost moisture in the air. (This is where humidity monitoring is essential.)
• Higher temperatures could result in noisier data centers.

For data centers operating at higher temperatures, environmental monitoring that encompasses temperature monitoring, humidity monitoring, and water leaks is key.

I spent my lunch time researching my proof of concept design. I Googled Solar Panels and found everything from cool DIY YouTube videos to full service companies. Finding a package wouldn’t be that difficult. Monitoring the package and integrating its data into our current network would be a little more involved.

Monitoring the output of a solar panel can be done with the Ravica Power Monitor. The power monitor can read both 120v and 22v. With this monitor you are able to determine up/down state and measure voltage on a constant basis. With this data you can be alerted on the sensor exceeding a pre-defined threshold with  industry leading notification options like: SNMP traps, email, SMS, MMS and the recently released Skype support. You can also use the data to trend the panels output.

I was done, a quick proof of concept that could work. Imagine being able to show your company how much the IT department is saving! It might be a dream now, but someday it will be reality. Bigger ideas have been planned on the back of a cocktail napkin. Mine was in a Google note book, so I am a step a head!

Did you notice that the price of oil is up again?

- Jimmy D

“There are hundreds of areas identified as server rooms or data centers – from small server closets to large enterprise data centers, each with unique needs. Despite differing specifications, one key important conservation practice is to keep servers out of undesignated spaces; they should be housed in a server closet, server room, or data center that adheres to the energy-saving best practices.” – UMICH.edu

The University of Michigan has pointed out simple ways to adjust how your current setup can be adjusted to help you save energy and your environment. They list options for data centers the size of a closet (1 to 2 servers) to Enterprise size (100′s of servers)

Corria Nucci from Informationweek’s Green Computing Webblog points out that one of the best ways to save energy is to consolidate your servers. This option has become popular in recent years due to the power of the recent processors and the ease of “Virtual” environments like VMWare.

Analysts, however, are skeptical about all the new marketing over greener IT. “Many of the answers are things that don’t generate publicity, such as rightsizing the facility and supporting green design principles,” says Steve Wallage, a managing consultant at BroadGroup.

The end result is that companies are not buying into the hype due to cost or lack of supporting data. They just can’t see it helping.

The best answer? IT analysts and vendors both agree it is in metrics: studying power consumption, reallocating  server loads, refocusing airflows—and even in simple measures such as shutting off a server that’s not in use.

This can all be done with simple equipment that will help you monitor your server rooms environmental conditions, such as Ravica’s “Used Power Monitor Sensor” and the “Temperature” and “Air Flow” sensors. In the end, these small steps will not only help the world be a little greener and possibly cut down your energy and equipment costs.

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Jim Dougherty aka “Jimmy D”
Lead PreSales Support Engineer and
Netflow Evangelist for Plixer International!

Follow me on Twitter
http://twitter.com/jimmydnet

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