FOCUS EBAY TOUR
Issue 20, Feb/March
INSIDE A NEXT-GENERATION DATA CENTER
Hybrids of cutting-edge technologies, sky-high power densities, free cooling in one of the most erratic climates in the world and doubling of capacity every three years. Yevgeniy Sverdlik tours eBay’s Project Mercury in Arizona
E
Bay, the company operating the online marketplace that was instrumental in forever changing the way we buy things, is faced with an infrastructure demand few companies have ever had to face. In addition to having passed the 100m-user mark and buying other companies left and right, it is diving head first into Big Data.
Its new Hadoop data analytics platform is currently sitting on a 400-node cluster that is going to double in size before the end of 2012. eBay is also implementing a brand new search engine running on a high-performance computing (HPC) system. The Hadoop cluster and the HPC system are sitting in data center containers on the roof of Project Mercury – eBay’s brand new data center in Pheonix, Arizona.
EXTREME AGILITY
A running theme throughout Project Mercury’s engineering is a variety of approaches to every problem. There are two different kinds of data center containers on the roof (HP and Dell) and a raised floor inside. There are two cooling loops – a traditional one and a hot-water one. This cooling system was designed to someday accommodate direct-to-chip liquid cooling, if necessary. There are also two redundancy tiers in the facility: II and IV.
“I’ve always believed [that] there’s never a single answer to a problem,” Dean Nelson, eBay’s senior director of global foundation services, says. He is responsible for eBay’s infrastructure.
The main reason for this approach is to make the facility future-proof. It has to go through four tech refreshes in its lifetime – doubling density each time – so the infrastructure has to accommodate whatever the future brings.
Using multiple tiers is smart capital utilization. There is no reason to spend top dollar on Tier IV infrastructure to support applications that do not require that level of reliability. Some Tier IV infrastructure is available, however, for the applications that do have these requirements.
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www.datacenterdynamics.com
The team has the choice to increase capacity by rolling racks onto the raised floor or by dropping a container on the roof.
BIG ENOUGH FOR CONTAINERS
As it goes through the aforementioned technology refreshes, the facility’s total power capacity will grow from the current 4MW to 12MW. Its rack density will scale from 4kW per rack to 40kW. Containers on the roof are one piece of the density puzzle, as they pack a lot of servers.
eBay’s director of mission critical engineering Mike Lewis says the company had spent four to five years looking at containers before Nelson joined the company, evaluating each “flavor of the month” as products appeared on the market. The reason the company finally invested in one was down to its capacity demand, which had shown enough of a growth rate to require expansion bursts of suitable magnitude, Lewis says.
A big challenge with putting containers on the roof, however, was their weight. The team ended up packing inside a two-storey building enough structural steel to support a 10-storey building, Lewis says.
NUMBERS TO PROVE IT
The Green Grid (TGG) studied the project to validate eBay’s efficiency results. Judging by a report on the study TGG released in late February, the group is impressed.
Not only has it shown a strong PUE but also use of TGG’s recently launched Data Center Maturity Model, meeting and in some cases exceeding its standards.
Project Mercury’s best site PUE was 1.26. The worst site PUE was 1.43 and average is 1.35. eBay reported (and TGG validated) the Dell module’s best PUE of 1.018.
Its worst PUE was 1.047 and its average PUE was 1.039. These were measured continuously over a period of one week in early February, when the site had about 35% of installed IT capacity.
COMPANIES THAT HELPED MAKE PROJECT MERCURY A REALITY
RFP winning design team: EDI, Winter Street Architects, AHA Consulting Engineers General contractor: DPR Construction Civil & geotechnical engineering: Zell Steel: Able Steel Paralleling gear: ASCO Concrete: Baker Concrete In-row coolers: Custom Mechanical Systems EPMS monitoring: Controls Solution Group Electrical: Delta Diversified Generators: Empire-CAT Raised access flooring installation: ISS Modular chiller plant and cooling towers: Johnson Controls Metal louvers and sound attenuation panels: Kovach Inc. UPS, bypass gear, switchgear lineup: S&C BMS controls: Setpoint Raised access flooring manufacturer: Tate Gordon grid and interior acoustical panels: TP Acoustics Mechanical plumbing: UMEC Containment: SubZero Cabinet and power strip supplier: Staples Technology Solutions Sidewinder manufacturer: Electrorack Structured cable installation: Sprig Electric Structured cable supplier: Anixter MTP fiber vendor: Leviton Patch panel and MTP cart vendor: Panduit Copper cable vendor: Superior Essex Network rack and patch rack vendor: CPI Cabinet manufacture: DAMAC Power strip manufacture: Raritan Server rack & power strip supplier: Instor Passive rear cooling doors: Emerson Rear door heat exchangers: Liebert Commissioning: CDCDG Maintenance: McKinstry Project management: TSP Security consultant: Northland Structural engineering: Caruso Turley Scott Fire alarm and VESDA: Westfire
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