data centre power trends uknof 4 – 19 th may 2006 marcus hopwood internet facilitators ltd

Data Centre Power Trends

UKNOF 4 – 19th May 2006

Marcus Hopwood

Internet Facilitators Ltd

The bad news

Demand is up Price is up Oversupply is running out

The good news

Hardware manufacturers (finally) realise power is an issue

Energy policy high on government’s agenda IFL opening a new data centre

Demand is up

Demand is up

Average power per rack increasing Higher power servers Higher density deployments

High usage increasing faster Blade servers

Power usage in IFL data centres

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Am

ps

Rack average

High usage rack

Air cooling limit?

Typical customer usage

Power challenges

Available supply Limits on supply from grid Delay on increasing supply

Cooling the data centre Chilled air has maximum capacity Increasing use of water cooled racks

Price is up

DTI energy price review

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

Q1

2004

Q2

2004

Q3

2004

Q4

2004

Q1

2005

Q2

2005

Q3

2005

Q4

2005

Pen

ce p

er k

Wh

Very Small

Small

Medium

Moderately Large

Large

Very Large

RPI (M. Large)

RPI (Large)

Supply problems

Electricity prices rising much faster than RPI Volatility in electricity supply marketplace High cost of new supplies Long lead time for new supplies

Real cost of electricity

Power at rack 10A 2.3kW

Losses (UPS etc)

1A 0.23kW

Cooling 3.6A 0.828kW

Total 14.6A 3.358kW

Real cost of electricity

4p 6p 8p

10A Rack £1176 £1765 £2353

Oversupply is running out

Oversupply running out

London data centres filling up IFL in Manchester full since October 2005 Telecity in Manchester full

Hardware manufacturers respond

HP

“Server and data center power management: Our work proposed temperature-aware scheduling, hardware-software co-ordination to enforce power budgets, and new blade designs for lower power. Our optimizations are individually successful in reducing system power by 20-50%.”

IBM

“The need for more performance from computer equipment in data centers has driven the power consumed to levels that are straining thermal management in the centers.”

Sun Microsystems

AMD

Intel

“Silicon and Platform Innovation—New materials, manufacturing techniques, and architectural approaches (such as multicore processors) will deliver substantial improvements in performance per watt over the next few years. This will enable ongoing increases in datacenter compute density, without driving up power and thermal requirements.”

Government energy policy

Why are electricity prices so high?

Generating capacity shortfall of 7-16GW by 2015

Equivalent to about 20% of current capacity Uncertainty about security of supply

Government agenda

Energy review due by end of July Nuclear power “back on the agenda with a

vengeance” (Tony Blair, 16th May 2006)

Possible price review

OFGEM consulted the market regarding price review

Initial decision that review not justified (but not ruled out)

Commitment to work with business to resolve issue

New data centre

Reynolds House

Additional 13,000 sq ft (gross) 2 MW power 200 watts / sq ft Average 15 – 20 Amps / rack (3.5 – 4.5 kW)

Marcus Hopwood

Internet Facilitators Ltd

marcus@internetf.co.uk

0161 275 1101