No April Fools’ joke this: Google shares its data center details
Apr 2, 2009 Green Architecture, Green Technologies
Google operates perhaps the largest number of data centers today. Their energy efficiency is critical for the company, as it directly relates to the costs of running them. Efficiency is important not just because improving it cuts power consumption costs, but also because inefficiencies typically produce waste heat that requires yet more expense in cooling.
Google data centers have long been known to be amongst the most efficient, but their designs were secret. But finally, everyone got a peek at them at the recently held “Data Center Efficiency Summit”, where the company discussed the innards of one of its data centers and custom web servers — all in a bid to promote energy efficiency.
The data centers have 1AAA shipping containers, sporting 1106 custom built servers each. Interestingly, each of the servers has its own 12-volt UPS. This pushes energy efficiency to 99.9% , as opposed to a standard centralized UPS setup which at best would only score 95%!
Tags: data centers, Google, PUC, servers
Samsung’s new 1.5 TB hard drive claims 40% power savings
Mar 10, 2009 Green Technologies
Samsung HDD
Hard drives are being used everywhere — from our homes to data centers. While our home computer may still be consuming not so significant part of our overall power consumption, Google, Microsoft and others are grappling with ways to bring down data center power bills. So Samsung’s new EcoGreen F2 harddisk drive with 1.5 Tb capacity and claimed 40% power consumption saving may be just what they were looking for.
Usually, hard disk capacity increases means an increased number of disks, which translates to higher power consumption. But Samsung’s solution, dubbed EcoTriangle is a low-power, low-heat, low-noise operation technology, ensuring that the F2EG drive is 40% lower in power consumption in idle mode and 45% lower in reading/writing mode than competitive drives.The company is already shipping the F2EG for $149.00.
Now before you become sceptical about all the “eco” terminologies being flung around, Andy Higginbotham, director of Samsung’s HDD division explains:
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: data centers, Google, Samsung
New tech to cuts data center energy consumption by 75%
Mar 8, 2009 Green Technologies
Better data centers
increasing power bills from datacenters has compelled companies, like Google and Microsoft, try to find innovative solutions to reduce their energy needs, from using virtualisation to optimising cooling needs. Now researchers at the University of Michigan have devised a new technique, called Powernap that promises to save up to 75% of the current power usage of data centers.
Researchers Thomas Wenisch and students David Meisner and Brian Gold are presenting a paper outlining the new techniques at the International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems in Washington D.C. The best thing about their technique is that they use existing technologies with some redesigns.
PowerNap is a plan to put servers into sleep mode, similar to that of notebooks when a user closes the lid, and requires a more efficient power supply technique. Further, servers are powered by multiple smaller 500 W power supplies, rather than a single 2250 W. The new power supply technique is called RAILS and stands for Redundant Array for Inexpensive Load Sharing. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: datacenter, Diomede, Google, Microsoft
IBM to test smart grid in Denmark
Feb 26, 2009 Green Architecture, Green Technologies
IBM has announced that it is now a member of the EDISON project in Denmark, which plans rolling out a smart grid network on the Danish island of Bornholm. It had announced similar plans in Malta recently.
Electric Vehicles in a Distributed and Integrated Market using Sustainable Energy and Open Networks (or EDISON) is an initiative partly funded by the Danish government and has Siemens and Technical University of Denmark and DONG Energy, Denmark’s largest energy company as other collaborators. Initially the study will focus on the interaction of plug-in cars with the smart grid, including their use for energy storage to cope with the periodic nature of wind energy. But EDISON may also be applied to the management of other types of decentralized batteries throughout the system at a later stage. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Denmark, GE, Google, IBM, Smart grid
Google and GE cohost smart grid conference
Feb 21, 2009 Green Technologies
GE and Google are now working together to make smart grid mainstream. Shortly after Google unveiling its Powermeter app that helps in real-time monitoring of power consumption and GE airing a Smart Grid Superbowl ad, these companies organised a conference in Washington that saw a 500 strong audience. Now we have got a video of the whole affair!
Smart grid technologies can optimise electricity consumption and ensure that we do not need to build new powerplants to meet our future energy needs. It will also be imperative because of the periodic nature of mos renewable energy sources like wind and solar energy.
Tags: GE, Google, Smart grid
Now Google will help yo cut your energy consumption as well!
Feb 10, 2009 Green Architecture, Green Technologies
Google has just launched a free web service called PowerMeter that’ll let users track energy consumption in their homes or business in real time, provided there’s a means to upload the data. The service is currently in closed beta, so everybody won’t be able to test it just yet.
To use the Powermeter app and get access to energy information, you will need a “smart meters.” Even the devices should be compliant, so that energy consumption patterns can be shared and analysed seamlessly. Google is partnering with utility companies as well as gadget manufacturers fo this. But with 40 million smart meters in use worldwide currently, and with plans to add another 100 million in the next few years, this has enormous potential.
Hop over to the site or attend the upcoming GE-Google co-hosted event “Plug into the Smart Grid” on Feb. 17, 2009 at Washington DC ! The efforts of coporate behemoths like GE (recently airing an ad on smart grid during Superbowl) and Google (with the powermeter) will push the adoption of smart grid worldwide. There is a growing realisation that devising ways to control the demand for electric power is a cheaper and easier alternative to building more power plants.
Tags: GE, Google, Smart grid
Environmental impact of Google search: reports, denials and more
Jan 13, 2009 Information of the Day
Last few days have seen a The Times (London) article about the impact of each of your Google search being equal to half as much as boiling a cup of tea spread like wildfire. It has spawned debates as well a retort from Google. Now it appears that physicist Alex Wissner-Gross, the expert quoted in the article, has denied the results attributed to him! all these years we have seen the traditional media having doubts about authenticity of user generated news sources, but now they have been found out to be much better! Just like the old research comparing error rates of Encyclopedia Brittanica and Wikipedia had the later coming out on tops!
It all began with a The Times of London article that focuses on The Environmental Impact of Google Searches. In it, physicist Alex Wissner-Gross posits that a single Google search generates 7g of CO2, versus around 15g for a tea kettle - something he calls a “definite environmental impact.” When you consider that there are about 200 million Google search queries everyday, things don’t look too good. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Carbon emission, Google, Internet, Time UK, Wissner-Gross
WSJ punches holes into Dell’s green claims; raises a bigger question
Jan 2, 2009 Green Technologies
Dell
Few weeks after Dell heaped scorn over Apple’s green cred claims, a recent Wall Street Journal article reveals that Dell itself, which claims to be the “greenest tech company on the planet” has some seriously suspect environmental claims.
Dell has claimed that it has been carbon neutral since the summer of 2008. Not so, says The Wall Street Journal. It points out that the company’s carbon footprint is a self determined metric, with Dell arbitrarily picking its carbon footprint to encompass its boilers and company-owned cars, its buildings’ electricity use, and its employees’ business air travel. But the carbon emissions generated from the sources cited are just a drop in the bucket compared to Dell-related emissions from the oil used by Dell’s suppliers to make its computer parts, the diesel and jet fuel used to ship those computers around the world, or the coal-fired electricity used to run them. Read the rest of this entry »
Energy metrics for data centers from Green Grid
Nov 19, 2008 Stars, Policy and Finance
The Green Grid
The Green Grid, a global consortium of IT firms committed to enhancing the energy efficiency and greener computing, is hoping to have a new package of standardized metrics in place from 2009 to will allow firms to compare the energy efficiency of different servers, storage systems and networking equipment, in much the same way we compare graphics hardware performance or have benchmarks for motorists to compare the fuel efficiency of different cars.
Speaking to BusinessGreen.com, Green Grid director Jim Pappas said that having successfully launched a measure for assessing the efficiency of datacentre cooling and power supply units in the form of its Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) metric the consortium is now working on standards for measuring the efficiency of the IT equipment itself.
“The PUE tells how much of the energy going into the facility is used by the IT equipment, but the next step is to try to understand how efficient the IT equipment is itself,” he explained, adding that standards for assessing the utilisation of different systems had already been drafted and that the consortium was aiming to deliver draft versions of the completed efficiency metrics some point next year.
Previous attempts to develop standards for measuring the energy efficiency of servers, storage systems and networking equipment have previously faltered with rival IT manufacturers arguing over how to compare products’ energy use when handling differing workloads.
However Green Grid will have better odds - it recently signed up its 200th member and counts several of the world’s largest IT companies among its ranks, including Google and Microsoft - means that it will be able to deliver a metric the industry supports.
Read more here.
Tags: Google, Green Grid, Microsoft, PUC
Google joins Smart Grid industry coalition
Nov 14, 2008 Stars, Policy and Finance
DRSG
Google has joined Demand Response and Smart Grid Coalition (DRSG, formerly DRAM, the Demand Response and Advanced Metering Coalition), a coalition of different companies involved in energy monitoring, smart grids and the likes. DRSG, founded in 2001, is one of several trade groups that are looking to work on policy issues, and provide information about technologies that can make the power grid smarter.
Google’s addition to the smart grid group is significant, because as Google increasingly invests into the energy industry, it will look into ways it can use its history of managing the information of the Internet in the energy space. In September 2008, Google and conglomerate GE announced a partnership to collaborate on energy policy and technology, including pushing for a smarter electricity grid, cleaner power generation and greener transportation. Google has also unveiled a few innovative designs for its data centers, including one that is floating on a barge.
Smart grids will help the devices communicate with the grid and postpone non-critical tasks to when there is less strain e.g. a refrigerator which defrosts during non-peak hours. This will be important as several renewable energy resources like wind and solar are preiodic rather than continuous.
Tags: DRSG, GE, Google, Smart grid