FOCUS MODULAR VS CUSTOM DESIGN
Issue 12, Oct/Nov
The TCO is also lower when power infrastructure is built to provide capacity for immediate need. This is because power infrastructure depreciates whether it is fully used or not and underutilization leads to failure to “adequately recover initial investment,” according to the paper. Maintenance of a large electrical system may also result in a larger expense.
The same is true for over-provisioning cooling capacity: amortization and maintenance costs drive down overall TCO.
FLEXDC V. BRICK-AND-MORTAR
HP introduced its latest modular data center design called FlexDC in July, promising 50% capital-cost savings and short deployment time.
The company also says the overall TCO of a FlexDC will be lower not only because it is cheaper to deploy, but also because it is more energy efficient, resulting in lower cost over its lifetime. The greatest opportunities for energy saving in its FlexDC design are in the cooling and electrical distribution systems, the vendor says.
In a white paper on FlexDC, HP presents a TCO comparison between a fully built FlexDC data center and a brick-and-mortar facility over 20 years. The comparison assumes that the capital costs of land and taxes are similar in both scenarios.
The analysis HP presents in the white paper concludes that the modular option will result in a 14% reduction in energy consumption, translating into $415,500 in annual savings over a state-of-the-art brick-and-mortar data center. The dollar figure is based on an energy cost of $0.08 per kWh.
The vendor estimates capital cost of a fully-built FlexDC facility (excluding land acquisition cost) to be $28m and puts the cost of a traditional data center at US$58 million, or 55% more. HP does not provide a detailed breakdown of how the two numbers were arrived at, offering instead a general description of the type of building materials used and nature of the electrical and mechanical set-up.
The FlexDC data center has a degree of redundancy in the electrical infrastructure that is equivalent to Uptime Institute’s Tier III specification. It is a distributed redundant
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electrical distribution scheme, including a flywheel UPS system in prefabricated self- contained housings. Generators are on the exterior and are also in prefabricated self- contained housing, with belly tank fuel storage.
The cooling infrastructure consists of prefabricated, self-contained air handlers with air-to-air heat exchangers that use Dx refrigerant cooling to fill in during times when local climate does not provide enough free cooling. There are no raised floors. Hot aisles are contained, with hot air being directed to the top and returned to air handlers. The building shell of a FlexDC building is metal.
Building shell of the base-case data center used for comparison consists of concrete reinforced walls, with all cooling and electrical systems housed in the same shell. The cooling set- up in the comparison facility is one with a central chiller plant and a pump-and-piping infrastructure that delivers cold air to the air handlers on the computer floor.
The only information given about the electrical system of the comparison data center is that it uses a dual-ended static UPS system and is also built to a Tier III redundancy level.
Total critical power available to a FlexDC facility is 3.2MW and the brick-and-mortar data center that has the same critical load is used for comparison.
IBM’S 25% SAVINGS CALCULATION
In addition to containers, IBM also offers two non-container modular designs. The Scalable Modular Data Center (SMDC) offers modules that are sized between 500 sq ft and 2,500 sq ft and the Enterprise Modular Data Center scales in 5,000 sq ft increments to more than 20,000 sq ft total.
The SMDC can give customers up to 25% in savings on capital expenditures over traditional designs, according to the vendor. A company spokesman wrote in an email that the savings figure was derived from a comparison to a traditional, raised-floor data center.
“Because SMDC solutions do not require a raised floor, the access ramp required in a raised-floor environment; a separate UPS/ battery room; separate cooling for the UPS/ battery room; the walls/doors/ceilings required by this additional space; the fire protection/suppression and security required for these additional spaces, or the additional electrical distribution work required to create a traditional data center environment, our calculations show that an SMDC can be as much as 25% cheaper to build than a traditional data center,” he said.
IBM also promises savings on operational expenses for customers that deploy the SMDC. These savings are achieved in the areas of power requirements for the cooling system and more efficient UPS systems, as they are sized to actual requirements. “SMDC opex savings have been shown to be typically in the 15% range when compared to traditional raised floor data centers, with some clients realizing even more,” IBM said.
While the vendors report growing popularity of modular data centers, there are not many examples that are not veiled by customer confidentiality agreements.
In evaluating a modular solution, the same basic questions that are asked in evaluating a traditional design apply, and the same variations on answers should be expected, as even with modular design, no fit will be right for all.
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