FEATURE GREEN IT Says No to Skyrocketing Utility Bills
Jeff Klaus general manager of Data Centre Solutions at Intel Corporation offers an Insight in to how data centre energy and thermal patterns are being used to curb OpEx, PUE, and carbon footprint
decreased from 1MWh to 970KWh). They also lowered carbon footprint (CO2) emission by an amount that is equivalent to 40 fewer vehicles on the road. The increase in set point also decreased PUE by 0.03. During the evaluations of increased RAT set point, IT leveraged thermal insights from Intel DCM to monitor the impacts on the system room (200 servers). A 1- degree increase from 24 to 250
C resulted
in 2% reduction in power to the cooling systems. For a 2-degree increase, the estimated savings should add up to US$4,500 annually for the single room, or US$50,000 for the data centre. In rooms where cold aisle containment
is being introduced, the company has raised the RAT set point from 24 to 260
W
hen an operational expense (OpEx) report showed that electricity costs
had become one-third of Türk Telekom’s data centre OpEx, Turkey’s leading communications and convergence technologies company recognised an opportunity. They set out to simultaneously improve carbon footprint and shift utility costs to high-value initiatives.
IDENTIFYING USAGE PATTERNS To gain more visibility of energy consumption in the data centres, Türk Telekom implemented a pilot deployment of the Intel Data Centre Manager (DCM) solution in one of the company’s system rooms. Prior to the start of the project, the calculated PUE was 1.77. In less than one week, Intel DCM was deployed and IT and facilities teams immediately started quantifying and visualising the current energy and temperature patterns related to servers, cooling solutions, and data centre workloads. Over the next year, energy and thermal
monitoring was introduced into additional systems rooms. IT teams now use it to see the impact of individual and groups of data centre devices on infrastructure, and facilities teams have gained a better understanding of the energy and cooling requirements. To improve server virtualisation and
consolidation, the detailed information about server power consumption supports better decisions and helps IT more accurately target candidates for consolidation and renewal. In combination with other company initiatives aimed at efficiency, these efforts are helping
36 WINTER 2015 | ENERGY MANAGEMENT
increase overall virtualisation of servers from 61% (compared to the Turkey telecommunications industry average of 67%) to 77% by the beginning of this year. Detailed views of resource utilisation have also contributed to larger efforts for on-going consolidation and adjustments in data centre rooms. In the first year alone, Türk Telekom has been able to reclaim (and assign to other workloads): • 269 cores and 438GB memory (x86 virtualisation platforms)
• 83.5 cores (high-end UNIX systems) • 50 virtual servers (cloud platforms) By identifying idle and underutilised servers, Intel DCM also helps determine which servers should be switched into sleep mode. In the case of one Türk Telekom disaster recovery centre, consumption drops from 2700 to 300KWh for a blade chassis put into sleep mode. This adds up to an estimated savings of US$20,000 over three years in this particular system room containing 200 servers. By leveraging Intel DCM to aggregate server and cooling unit inlet temperature data, Türk Telekom is now making progress to comply with ASHRAE recommendations for server inlet temperatures. For example, the company raised the set point for cooling units by 1.50
C and achieved
US$40,000 per year savings (3% savings in cooling costs, with cooling load
Figure 1: Facilities teams
quantified and visualised the current energy and temperature patterns related to servers, cooling solutions, and data centre workloads used by Türk Telekom
C.
Intel DCM remains in use to monitor the results and help evaluate the overall viability of CAC and the temperature increases for all data centre rooms.
“To gain more visibility of energy
PROMOTING TEAMWORK To date, in targeted system rooms, PUE has been lowered from 1.77 to 1.61 by turning energy insights into data centre optimisations. Note, however, that PUE reflects only infrastructure efficiency (cooling, UPS conversion, etc.). Intel DCM also enables optimisations that deliver savings in terms of IT power, for additional benefits to the OpEx budget, as well as insights about infrastructure heat and power usage. Going forward, Türk Telekom plans to apply Intel DCM monitoring to more servers and data centre rooms, and continues to introduce it to systems rooms at both production and disaster recovery data centre sites. By providing a tool that offers
consumption in the data centres, Türk Telekom implemented a pilot
deployment of the Intel Data Centre Manager.”
intuitive views of both energy and thermal patterns, Turk Telekom has also equipped IT and facilities teams to more collaboratively address overall energy efficiency. IT teams can see the impact of IT assets on infrastructure, and facilities teams can see the heat and power load
for each IT device. Both teams have better understanding of each other’s concerns, and have a platform that encourages improved cooperation in the future.
Intel Corporation
software.intel.com Jeffrey.S.Klaus@intel.com
/ ENERGYMANAGEMENT
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