FOCUS CENTRAL EUROPE
Issue 7, Dec 09/Jan 10
THE BANK’S PERSPECTIVE
Dániel Némethy, chief information officer of Hungarian Bank K&H, gives his perspective on operating data centers in the region.
Q: Does it make financial sense to house a data center in Hungary, or is it cheaper in other neighbouring countries? A: When a company decides on the location of its data center, Hungary has pros and cons to offer as well. A con is the so-called city tax, which is generally 2% of the company’s income. A pro is that there is government support of investment in the company. This subsidy is available if your investment creates new workplaces. There is a central office for supporting foreign investments (ITD), which gives any necessary support to run the process for a state subsidy. There is also a possible corporate tax reduction, which is available by law, if a company meets certain requirements. Actually, the major cost factors are about the same level in all the Visegrad countries.
Q: Is the electricity supply in Hungary stable enough for the needs of existing data centers/ computer rooms? A: In the central area of Hungary, a data center would most probably perfectly be served with electricity. There is a stable power supply, and major players such as E.ON and ELMÜ can guarantee you the capacities in 10MW terms, without any difficulties. If you would like double supply from different vendors, you can choose locations where different suppliers are able to provide power. Depending on the chosen place, the supplier might need to invest in his infrastructure to meet stability requirements.
Q: Are you concerned with being green and energy efficiency, and does the government reward this approach at all with subsidies? A: Yes, in general data centers can be designed with cooling systems, which use heat pumps. Applying such technologies reduces the actual need of electricity. There is a continuous development of green cooling technology, and in parallel the density of computer capacity is growing, requiring more effective cooling. It is not easy to predict which trend is stronger. I do not exclude the return of water cooling.
Q: What are the theoretical benefits of building your own data center versus using a provider? A: Such a decision would have different evaluation aspects and outcomes in different industries. In the financial industry, the data protection requirements are steadily growing. The geo- clustering is a must. At the moment, you can find providers for one certain location, but not for two plots interconnected for synchronous data processing. If you own your collocation center, you can define and customise your tools and processes according to your requirements. You can even have common staff ensuring that your data centers are not only planned but really stay equivalent. But if you are not a geographically spread out organisation, the business case might be more favourable for using a provider to ensure the necessary data center service for you.
Hungary does a pretty decent job. The whole mix here is not the worst – not so much coal, for example. We could go out and tender for renewable energy for this facility, but no one really knows where energy comes from, so we haven’t explored that yet,” he says.
But Dataplex, like data center operators everywhere, won’t have much choice when it comes to improving its environmental credentials long term. “As a user of power – say, more than 10MW – you are probably going to have conditions to meet, but I don’t know what they will be. We will deal with it when it comes up,” says Hawkins.
HOT SUMMERS, COLD WINTERS Dataplex has improved its efficiency over the last 18 months by around 20%, which makes the data center nearly green. The norm is that every kilowatt used requires a kilowatt of cooling, but Dataplex is driving down that ratio to 50% in the new wing and around 70%
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for the older facility, through techniques such as free air cooling, which has been deployed in half of the facility so far.
But while the use of free air cooling in Hungary is possible during the winter, when temperatures can drop to -20o
C, one
of the peculiarities of the region is that tough winters are balanced out by very hot summers, which can last from April to October, with temperatures of up to 40o June to August.
C in
On average, it is still pretty good, but we do see an average saving of about 10% in the winter. Using free cooling, that saving goes up even more, to around 20%.”
Dataplex also offers what it calls “extreme cooling” – using liquid cooling technologies – but has seen little demand from customers so far. Although electricity costs have come down by 25% already this year, Hawkins
While the electricity may be stable for now, forecasts about the immediate future of the Hungarian and regional economy aren’t quite so dependable, with economists pointing to the current recession derailing the growth which the former Iron Curtain states have witnessed since 1989.
Hawkins doesn’t see any need for Dataplex to expand beyond its current size for some time. “The new facility will last quite a while,” he says.
Efficiency is up, density isn’t
says few customers are really upping the amount or the density of the infrastructure they are using by deploying blade servers, for example. “Blades are only about 10-15% of our hardware, where in Western Europe it’s closer to 50%,” he says.
WILD WILD EAST Aside from how much it and its customers use, the constancy of the electricity supply is another universal issue for data center providers, and Dataplex is no exception. But despite concerns about the “wild, wild East” as parts of Eastern Europe have been portrayed, Hungary’s electricity and transport infrastructure are extremely stable.
In a recent report from analyst Gartner, in which Hungary ranked 3rd in Europe, the country was praised for its power and transport networks. “Hungary’s overall infrastructure looks good, compared with some other Eastern European countries,” the analyst commented.
Although it takes the usual back-up and UPS approaches, Dataplex hasn’t experienced any issues with power beyond the occasional glitch that would be expected in Western Europe, according to Hawkins. “We have two substations connected, which is obviously a standard in the data center world as you have to have a backup. We have only had one instance when both lines were down for five minutes or so, and the UPSs took over immediately. It’s pretty rare, though,” he says.
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