Under the Dome: Green Thoughts on Data Centers

The night of *** in February 2015 was destined to belong to Chai Jing.

Her documentary "Under the Dome" set the entire Internet on fire. While everyone was exclaiming that their WeChat and Weibo were flooded with messages, it also made us think: What can we do for the environment and ecology in which we live? For the general public, we can try to choose green travel methods such as buses, subways, and bicycles. We can choose high-quality oil to reduce toxic gas emissions, install smoke and dust filters, and we can complain to the Environmental Protection Bureau for improvements if there is any environmental pollution.

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For the data center industry, which is energy-intensive, what can we do to protect our environment and ecology?

In recent years, the construction of data centers has tended to develop towards large-scale development, and the power consumption of large data centers is quite alarming. For example, for a data center with a construction scale of 2,000 racks, based on the average power of 3kW per rack, 2,000 racks consume 6,000 degrees of electricity per hour, and the annual power consumption is 52,560,000 kWh. Other energy consumption such as air conditioning, fresh air, electricity, and lighting in the data center must also be taken into account. The huge energy consumption has brought great pressure to the operating costs and environmental protection of the data center. Therefore, the construction of data centers pays more and more attention to energy conservation. "Green, environmental protection, energy saving, and high efficiency" is also the concept and direction of the next generation of data center construction.

How to measure the energy consumption of a data center?

PUE, short for Power Usage Effectiveness, is an indicator for evaluating the energy efficiency of a data center. It is the ratio of all the energy consumed by a data center to the energy used by IT loads. PUE is a ratio with a benchmark of 2. The closer it is to 1, the better the energy efficiency level. The PUE value has become an internationally accepted indicator for measuring the power usage efficiency of data centers. At present, the PUE value of advanced data center computer rooms abroad is usually less than 2. According to statistics from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the average PUE value of China's data centers is currently between 2.2 and 3.0. ChinaCache's Shouming Cloud Data Center in the Tianzhu Free Trade Zone in Shunyi has an ultra-large scale of 80,000 square meters, including about 7,500 cabinets, with a PUE design value between 1.44 and 1.50 and an average PUE value of 1.46, which fully meets the internationally leading green data center energy-saving standards.

The energy consumption of a typical data center consists of:

The largest part is the IT equipment system, which accounts for about 50% of the total energy consumption of the data center. It includes server equipment, storage equipment, and network communication equipment;

The second largest part is the air conditioning system, which accounts for about 37% of the total energy consumption of the data center. Among them, the air conditioning refrigeration system accounts for about 25% of the total power consumption, and the air conditioning supply and return air system accounts for about 12% of the total power consumption;

The third largest component is the UPS power supply and distribution system, which accounts for about 10% of the total energy consumption of the data center;

The last part is the auxiliary lighting system.

Green Data Center refers to IT systems, cooling, lighting and electrical equipment in the data center that can achieve the best energy efficiency and the least environmental impact. Its "green" is specifically reflected in the overall design and planning, as well as IT equipment such as air conditioners, UPS, servers, and management software applications in the data center, which must be energy-saving, environmentally friendly, highly reliable, available, and reasonable. Since PUE = total data center equipment energy consumption/IT equipment energy consumption, reducing the PUE value of the data center is often achieved by taking energy-saving measures to reduce the power consumption of data center equipment. ChinaCache Shouming Cloud Data Center deeply considered green energy conservation at the beginning of its construction and design, and strictly implemented it in accordance with the national standards and specifications for data center construction.

Changes in domestic green data centers

As for the energy consumption of IT equipment, hardware manufacturers are constantly improving chip manufacturing processes to reduce energy consumption. Therefore, under the same performance conditions, data centers can choose equipment with strong heat dissipation capabilities, small size, light weight, low noise, and easy standard rack installation. With the maturity and implementation of virtualized cloud computing technology, equipment such as high-efficiency power supplies, dynamic cooling, intelligent power management functions, and "dynamic sleep" can also help improve the IT utilization rate of data centers.

In terms of data center cooling, reasonable air conditioning configuration and selection can bring certain energy savings. For example, the use of a dual-circuit water cooling system, the optimal air conditioning configuration obtained through strict calculation, the integration of natural cooling technology, the magnetic suspension centrifugal water cooling system can greatly reduce the energy consumption of the system, the reasonable design of the supply and return air system, and the independent temperature and humidity control system can also reduce energy consumption.

High-frequency energy-saving UPS units not only improve power factor and efficiency, but also provide high-quality power for IT equipment. The rectifier part uses IGBT uncontrolled rectifier links to improve the restoration rate of AC current output waveform and reduce the total harmonic distortion rate. Compared with ordinary equipment, it significantly improves conversion efficiency and reduces output loss.

In terms of data center lighting, lighting energy consumption can be reduced by reasonably arranging light sources, selecting LED low-energy lighting tools, and using intelligent control methods.

At present, there is no lack of excellent data center construction experience in the world. Facebook's data center has achieved solar power generation, which can solve part of the power supply and reduce carbon dioxide emissions caused by the combustion of fossil fuels. Apple's North Carolina data center has achieved complete energy self-sufficiency through solar energy and biogas fuel power generation. Foreign data center pioneers have begun to explore new energy supplies, which will also serve as a reference for domestic data center construction.

Nowadays, with the gradual transparency of information and the enhancement of environmental awareness, the continuous exploration of green energy-saving methods has become an important proposition for the construction of ChinaCache Shouming Cloud Data Center. What we do is only for the balance between IT development and ecological environment, for the sustainable development of the future, and for our right to breathe. We hope that everyone's efforts will eventually bring about the environment we long for:

"In spring, the door is open, the wind comes in, the fragrance of flowers comes in, and the colors come in. Sometimes when you encounter rain or fog, you can't help but take a deep breath into your lungs. You can feel the smell of the broken rain, which is both sharp and fresh."