Sizing our Demonstrator Data Centre


In order to demonstrate the feasibility of powering a data centre with renewable energy, we needed to determine an appropriate size.   We decided to choose a data centre that was as small as possible, while still being able to function as an independent unit.  The rationale being, that when trying to do something novel, it is better to prove the concept at a small scale and then expand upon it. This makes the project technically less difficult and financially less risky.

Containerised Data Centres

As part of the trend towards standardisation and modularisation, a number of companies have invested in containerised data centres, which are built containing racks and infrastructure (1).  They can be deployed on site within 3 months and kitted out with the clients’ IT equipment; this greatly reduces the time needed bring a fully functioning data centre into operation. Manufacturers include Hewlett-Packard, Sun, Cisco/Verari, IBM/APC, Bull, and VM Ware. 

NASA is using a single Cisco container for all the IT at its Ames research centre (1).  Microsoft’s new Chicago data centre includes a floor specifically designed to take container stacks in order to increase flexibility. 

Our Data Centre:

The smallest self-contained unit currently commercially available is the 20-ft Performance Optimised Data Centre, produced by HP.  Its infrastructure is reasonably efficient compared to best practice recommended by industry leaders in the last 2 years (2).  We therefore took this as the starting point for our demonstrator data centre.  Characteristics are taken from HP’s technical brochures (3), (4).



Although the total size of data centre is small, the power density is very high so this is a good test for an energy efficient cooling system.  Cooling requirements are covered in the next section.

 

References used in this page:

(1) Miller, R 2010: Data Center Knowledge: Containers http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/category/technology/containers/ accessed 1 Mar 2010
(2)  SLVG 2008: Silicon Valley Leadership Group: Data Centre Energy Forecast, August
(3) HP 2009: Performance Optimised Data centre - Data Sheet Hewlett-Packard; www.hp.com/products/pod, November accessed 3 March 2010
(4) HP 2008: Performance Optimised Data centre - Site Requirements Information Hewlett-Packard; www.hp.com/products/pod, November accessed 20 March 2010
(5) HP 2008: Performance Optimised Datacentre - Data Sheet 40ft POD Hewlett-Packard; www.hp.com/products/pod, November accessed 3 March 2010
(6) PriceWaterhouse Coopers 2007: Benchmarking Study on Iceland as a Location for Data Centre Activity, May