Energy Efficiency in Small Server Rooms: Field Surveys and Findings

Conference · Mon Aug 11 04:00:00 EDT 2014

OSTI ID:1172646

Cheung, Iris ^[1]; Greenberg, Steve; Mahdavi, Roozbeh; Brown, Richard; Tschudi, William

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1. Hoi

Fifty-seven percent of US servers are housed in server closets, server rooms, and localized data centers, in what are commonly referred to as small server rooms, which comprise 99percent of all server spaces in the US. While many mid-tier and enterprise-class data centers are owned by large corporations that consider energy efficiency a goal to minimize business operating costs, small server rooms typically are not similarly motivated. They are characterized by decentralized ownership and management and come in many configurations, which creates a unique set of efficiency challenges. To develop energy efficiency strategies for these spaces, we surveyed 30 small server rooms across eight institutions, and selected four of them for detailed assessments. The four rooms had Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) values ranging from 1.5 to 2.1. Energy saving opportunities ranged from no- to low-cost measures such as raising cooling set points and better airflow management, to more involved but cost-effective measures including server consolidation and virtualization, and dedicated cooling with economizers. We found that inefficiencies mainly resulted from organizational rather than technical issues. Because of the inherent space and resource limitations, the most effective measure is to operate servers through energy-efficient cloud-based services or well-managed larger data centers, rather than server rooms. Backup power requirement, and IT and cooling efficiency should be evaluated to minimize energy waste in the server space. Utility programs are instrumental in raising awareness and spreading technical knowledge on server operation, and the implementation of energy efficiency measures in small server rooms.

• Research Organization: Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA (US)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC)
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-05CH11231
• OSTI ID: 1172646
• Report Number(s): LBNL-6952E
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION
Energy
Energy Efficiency
Server Rooms