FOCUS DATACENTERDYNAMICS NEW YORK
Issue 9, April/May 10
by 50% and significantly reduce the cost. I have a goal to reduce the cost in next-generation builds by 50%, and we’re on track to actually better that. I can’t be any happier about that.
“I aim to deliver outstanding power usage effectiveness (PUE) and outstanding efficiency, all while using more renewable materials – heavy emphasis on using steel, aluminium – minimising uses of concrete and minimising disturbance to land. It is shaping up to be somewhat of a pole barn.”
The ITPAC that was shown is still only at proof of concept and is not anywhere like the final version, but what Timmons was proposing was not a unit that would act as an overspill capacity, or that would be suitable for military or rugged environments as an addition to the traditional concrete and steel structures we call data centers.
Instead, what was being proposed is a system of manufactured data centers that can be shipped around the world and deployed twice as fast, and at 50% of the cost of traditional methods. It just means finding the right places to put them.
Timmons has a team of globetrotters seeking the best location for its first next-generation data center.
He said he was showing a proof of concept that was already developing rapidly, and that the final first-generation ITPAC would look considerably different. He said that in the coming months Microsoft would announce a
More than a bite sized metaphor? new data center where they will be deployed.
While Timmons didn’t say as much, don’t be surprised if it turns out to be in South-East Asia.
QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR Naturally, the audience had some questions, one of which was: “Is there a limit to the server density that ITPACs can handle, especially as there is only so much that can be cooled by air?”
Timmons explained that the answer is partly not to get hung up on space. Finding the right land (acreage can be quite cheap) means not having to pack the racks and start pushing kilowatts of power to it.
Timmons conceded that on the IT side there are still plenty of people who “see a bright shiny object such as blade servers that need
THE ITPAC-BASED NEXT GENERATION DATA CENTER
Microsoft's first generation of data center consists of a single server, or rack of servers. Second-generation facilities are prerack deployments – integrated off-site and brought in as one or more single racks – consistent with the firms Quincy and San Antonio, Texas centers.
Third-generation Chicago, and to a degree Dublin, which actually have a mix of container and prerack deployments.
The next generation will consist of ITPACs. The ITPAC is really an air-handling unit built mostly of aluminium, with some steel with IT racks deployed. The flexibility of design goes right down to whether or not you need a centralised UPS, or a rack-mounted or inserver UPS. “We've already moved onto other designs that have two rows – working with manufacture to have them make similar structures to come into our environment.”
The ITPACs cool using an adiabatic system – can be with or without the louvres with the filters – and for deployments in controlled internal climates definitely with or without the skins.
One of the biggest concerns is not temperature, but humidity. In places such as South-East Asia, it is hot and wet, and it is the humidity that is the focus of much of the research into ITPACs. Microsoft, like many others, is pushing the inlet temperatures to 90o
-95o Farenheit.
One area of innovation that Timmons said is exciting for him and his team is the building of a sensor-based, highly resilient proprietary mesh network that allows configuration, control and monitoring, allowing new applications to be explored around asset management.
“When the resilient mesh network is deployed in the centers, and we've got hundreds of thousands of assets we can control, we want to be able to check the movements of every single IT asset in those facilities in very short order using this technology.”
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600W per sq ft and promise return on investment in three months, but with no idea what it is going to do to the actual data center”, he said.
“In Microsoft we are making headway – we can demonstrate what is the proper choice and what is not – from an IT perspective.”
Another question was raised about the factors that drove the physical considerations for the ITPAC.
There was a nod to shipping methods, taking guidance on shipping containers. And from largely internal research within Microsoft, what is the average scale unit size request to meet the business needs? The optimum size typically fell around 400-600/KW.
Design PUE ratings come in at around 1.16, with the worst getting up to peaks of around 1.35, depending on location.
LATE SUPPER The message from Timmons, not lost on the New York audience, is that whether it is data centers or sandwiches, the super-size option is no longer tenable. It will cost more, take longer to make, be more difficult to digest, and before you get halfway through it you’ll realise you don’t need the rest of it.
No one asked about the sandwich.
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