Ecology and data centers. As in Russia and abroad, "green data"

My colleagues and I studied the experience of world IT giants in the issue of environmental friendliness of data centers, squeezed the very juice out of materials on how Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and many others organize a synergistic model of data center performance. We also learned how “dirty” data are in Europe, America, and Russia and demonstrated why high-tech Asia is a “territory of environmental contrasts”.

Today nature guardians are magnetic levitation, artificial intelligence, biogas, data centers implanted into the ecosystem, and other eco-technologies. This article maximizes the efficiency of data centers, minimally affecting the environment.


The growth of data sets becomes avalanche-like. Data centers are demanding more and more electricity. On average, around the world they consume from 3 to 5% of all electricity. And in some countries this figure reaches 7%. The electricity used by the data centers goes to its entire engineering infrastructure and IT equipment. The filling of data centers is a prefabricated hodgepodge of equipment of various functionalities.


With an increase in the reliability class of the data center, its demand for resources also grows. And in data centers with high reliability, the equipment is generally duplicated. Many items of equipment in the system have a replacement - a kind of “player on the bench,” and the load is the same on each of them. It turns out that the lion's share of all the equipment just warms the atmosphere.

Recall the fact that most of the electricity used by data centers is produced from sources that do not have the best effect on the environment. But the data centers themselves are in fact harmless: most of them are not autonomous and receive electricity from city and regional sources, generated immediately for several customers. Well, it's time to change the arrangement of areas of responsibility and take control of the situation.

Some data centers themselves produce energy using diesel generators, however, they do this only to increase the level of reliability. Diesel generators not only significantly pollute the atmosphere, but are also famous for their high noise level. If everything is left as it is, the situation can be greatly aggravated. Just look at the East.

China

Three quarters of Chinese data centers operate on electricity from non-renewable resources, including coal. Each message in the messenger or photo on the social network burns new volumes of coal, which leads to the emission of millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

To represent the scale of the disaster, let us turn to the numbers. According to a 2019 GreenPeace study, in order to provide electricity to 44 Chinese data centers, in 2018, power plants emitted 99 million tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere.

The resulting smog disables the air conditioning systems, which perform the function of lungs for data centers. Unfortunately, China still cannot get rid of this bad habit.

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China's data centers consume more electricity than all of Hungary and Greece combined. 90% of them do not take active measures to "green" the energy used.

The Chinese government has already made attempts to launch a pilot program of "green" data centers. Beijing literally drew the line: what’s now prohibited in the capital are data centers, in which the accompanying engineering of data centers consumes more than half the energy required for server racks. As a result, data centers simply moved to the provinces.

There are other examples. Alibaba Group has solar and hydropower data centers. And for the data center in Guangzhou, the e-commerce giant used water from nearby Qingdao to cool servers. The company stopped the use of chillers (coolers) for a year. And they, for a minute, consume as much energy as the servers in the data center.

Chinese vendor Haier has developed a centrifugal chiller using magnetic levitation technology on bearings. The invention helps to reduce energy consumption and emissions of harmful substances. The company positions its unit as the most powerful in the world in terms of cooling capacity. Technology has taken the refrigeration sector to a new level. The power of alternative solutions fades in comparison with a new product. We look what will happen when it penetrates the market enough.

"Three E": Environmental friendliness, Efficiency, Saving

More and more companies are striving to start a business, striking a balance between environmental friendliness, energy efficiency and economy. Projects on "green" data centers are already being implemented by such major players as eBay, Amazon, Facebook and many others.

IT giants think ahead of time about optimal business organization models in order to achieve synergetic interaction between data centers and the environment. Not every company understands this. But after all, chasing two hares, you can catch as many as four *:

Hare №1
Involve energy from clean and renewable sources, including generating it yourself. Bonus Hare: This is a good way to increase your reputation in the market by becoming an environmentally responsible player.

Hare №2
Raise energy efficiency to a new level while reducing the need for it. Another obvious eared : you can save a lot.

_{* No animals were injured while writing the article}

Speaking of status. It can be officially earned by obtaining the Renewable Energy Certificates (REC) certificate, the presence of which confirms the cleanliness and renewability of the electricity used by the data center. A “medal on the chest” for environmental responsibility is not only pleasant, but also useful.

By correctly integrating data centers into the ecosystem with their geo-climatic features, it is possible to achieve a balance of “three E”. There are three areas to work through. Here are some examples.

• Exterior. The exterior of an environmentally friendly data center is the location of data centers in underground bunkers, in the Arctic deserts, in close proximity to water bodies with low temperatures or even at the bottom of the ocean. All this provides the possibility of natural conditioning and cooling.
• Interior. Speaking about the “stuffing” of the data center, it is necessary to think over all the nuances - from the special design of buildings and premises to the location of various systems and their interaction. For example, a good effect can be achieved by arranging cold and hot air flows in the corridors between the racks or by integrating the power generators directly into the servers.
• Clean energy. And for the production of clean energy they couldn’t come up with anything: solar panels, biogas, windmills, hydroelectric power stations, even artificial intelligence! However, for the continuity of the data center, you should not rely only on wind power generators and solar panels, which depend on the intensity of the elements.

Energy Efficiency Index (section for formula lovers)

Data center performance reflects PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness). It shows the ratio of the total power consumed by the data center (the building with the equipment in it) to the energy consumed by the equipment itself.

PUE = (Total capacity of data center equipment) / (Power of IT equipment in data center)

As an example: PUE 1.95 means that 95% of energy is used for air conditioning, cooling, and other “utility” data center needs relative to the server needs for the data center.

In most data centers in China, PUE is 2.2. This is much higher than in several European countries. And in the US, the average PUE is 1.9. Leading companies in terms of indicator show a figure of no more than 1.2.

Singapore

On the issue of successfully combining environmental responsibility and innovation, a small but very technologically advanced state - Singapore - stands out. Google, Amazon, and IBM have already deployed their server farms here. The country boasts a high concentration of data centers with ultra-fast connectivity and due to this keeps up with the generation of high technologies, providing fertile ground for the development of virtualization and mobility.

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Singaporean engineers Tropical Data Center (TDC) conducted an experiment with the creation of the world's first server "farm" for tropical climates. The goal is to explore the possibilities for using environmentally friendly technologies in data centers. And the global idea is to reduce the energy consumption of server farm infrastructure. Singapore is precisely the country we spoke about above: 7% of the nationwide electricity consumption goes to the diet of Singapore's data centers.

Many IT companies and even the technological university decided to take part in the experiment, providing their resources and developments. Within its framework, servers will be tested for endurance during power surges, the absence of temperature control or humidity control.

Apple

Apple earned the title of environmentally responsible corporation by implementing many eco-projects, despite the fact that for some time it was under pressure from environmentalists. Now in California, the Apple Park office has a powerful solar installation on the roof, the company is installing venerable solar arrays in the fields of Nevada, California and China.

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Apple’s iDataCenter is generally very tricky: it is painted white on the outside to reduce heat from the sun; in the data center three-phase power supply equipment; energy-saving LED lights are used throughout the building. For such "environmental friendliness" iDataCenter was awarded LEED Platinum certification .

Another source of energy for apple data centers is biogas plants. Gas is obtained from the decomposition of biomass. The methane produced by the plants is cleaned and accumulated in Bloom Box fuel cells, which then supply the company's servers with electricity.

There are many advantages to this model: firstly, this is a non-waste method of generating electricity, and secondly, the excess heat generated is sent back to the processing chamber to accelerate the fermentation process. And methane is a renewable and fairly affordable resource. How many rabbits at once!

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Helping Apple in environmental matters, Bloom Energy began its history with the creation of technology for converting Martian atmospheric gases into oxygen, of course, for space-scale purposes. Soon, the company realized that their technology could be more useful on Earth. Bloom Energy generates clean electricity for the digital age that can deliver highly reliable, trouble-free systems. Such ideas can rightfully be called one of the most effective, environmentally friendly and cost-effective on the planet. The company's business grows and protects the environment from huge doses of CO₂ in the environment.

Microsoft

Microsoft in 2013 refused to connect to the regional energy infrastructure. The data center has become its own energy company. Microsoft injected methane fuel cells directly into server racks. The introduction of an autonomous power source in the data center infrastructure has made it possible to optimize the distribution of energy. The efficiency of the data center has doubled. Such a data center can be placed wherever there is methane away from the city’s infrastructure.

But this is not all that the company may surprise us with. Project Natick submarine data centers can play a key role in the future in deploying Microsoft computing infrastructure. When the company launched this project, everyone around it perceived it as an experiment. But now Microsoft has even integrated the concept of underwater data centers into its “edge computing” strategy, which assumes maximum proximity of data to end users. The underwater data center is autonomous and powered by renewable energy.

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Facebook

Facebook’s energy efficiency data center (PUE) in Lulea is only 1.07. This region is 60 kilometers from the Arctic Circle. Facebook uses only the energy received from the hydroelectric power station at the confluence of the Lule River and the Gulf of Bothnia in the data center. The average temperature here is only 1 ° C. The company managed to reduce the number of spare generators by 70%.

The location of data centers in icy deserts involves some difficulties:

• the cost of construction and maintenance in difficult conditions,
• network availability and bandwidth issues,
• remoteness of clients from the "data source",
• exposure to too low temperatures on physical equipment.

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By the way, in order to reduce the energy consumption of the cooling system of the data center, it is not at all necessary to build it near the Arctic Circle. There are other methods. For example, Google used artificial intelligence.

Google

It all started with the fact that the leadership of the Alphabet holding decided to optimize costs. This corporation was assisted by developers from DeepMind, a subsidiary of Google. Based on an analysis of 120 different parameters of the five-year work of the data center, we developed system control algorithms - this is almost the same as the Singapore Tropical Data Center (TDC) is headed for now. The company has created a predictive model for monitoring energy efficiency based on artificial intelligence DeepMind. The system works on the principle of quantitative measurement of the equipment involved at different times: air conditioners, window opening / closing systems, fans, pumps, temperature control, energy consumption, chiller activity, etc. AI successfully copes even with predicting the time of maximum load on server equipment.

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And this is just the beginning! The created algorithms are self-learning, and can work even in unpredictable conditions. Now AI needs additional sensors that will collect information for training the system.

A few figures: the energy costs of the cooling systems were reduced by 40%, the total energy consumption - by 10%. All this has led to savings of billions of dollars over several years. Impressive, isn't it?

By 2018, the company has also completely transferred the power supply of its data centers to renewable energy sources. Google is second only to Facebook in terms of energy efficiency - PUE has reached 1.12 in its data center, while a number of European companies with an average of 1.8 still have room to develop.

Another Google data center can receive wind power. The goal of the project is to provide a floating data center on wind energy. It will be generated by huge kites high above the surface of the water, where the air currents are permanent. Serpent generators will also set ships in motion - just like sails.

Europe

Equinix AM3

This Dutch data center is located in Amsterdam. Its operator uses the Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage hybrid cooling towers. The cool air of the towers is used to lower the temperature of the hot corridors. Water removes heat from servers and racks, heats up and immediately goes to the heating system of the University of Amsterdam. This is another brilliantly implemented example of the win-win model. For personal needs, the Amsterdam data center generates about 800 thousand kilowatt-hours per year.

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Simec atlantis energy

Most recently, in early September 2019, the British energy company Simec Atlantis Energy announced the construction of a data center in Scotland that will operate exclusively from a renewable energy source. Electricity will come from a hydroelectric power station using tidal energy. This is the first data center in the world working from this kind of energy source. And its good location in the isthmus between the coast of Scotland and the island of Stroma will allow the station to save on the cooling system and receive energy due to the movement of flows of huge volumes of water. Flowing between the banks, the water will spin up the station’s turbines and supply the data centers with clean electricity.

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Russia

Let us turn to domestic experience. Unfortunately, in Russia the “green” design of data centers is not yet stimulated at the state level, as is happening in European countries. Currently, more than 80% of Russia's data centers are located in the capitals - in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Most data centers are owned by IT giants, telecommunications and financial companies. And the desire to design them in the green spectrum is prompted only by the desire to improve economic indicators - for example, save on electricity.

A good promising exception may be the young Yandex data center in Vladimir. Industrial air conditioners and chillers are not used there at all - everything is cooled using free-cooling technology. At the Yandex data center, it works like this: cold air enters the mixing chambers from the street, where, after filtration, it is pumped by the ventilation walls through the humidification module into the cold corridors. They wanted to conduct the heat generated by the servers to the administrative premises of the data center itself, to houses in the microdistrict nearby, to other industrial enterprises, or even to create a new project of greenhouse complexes, heated by the operation of the data center servers.

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In general, the energy efficiency of the Russian economy is 2.5-3 times lower than the global average energy efficiency indicator. But the desire to follow the path of import substitution in high-tech industries is quite warmed up with us.

The main problems that stand in the way of greening data centers in Russia:

• lack of investment and government incentives;
• local use of energy-efficient technologies;
• personnel “starvation” in the construction of data centers, in particular a noticeable lack of representatives for senior positions.

In Russia, they actively discussed the green design of data centers about five to seven years ago, then the talk subsided in the media, and environmentally responsible data centers have not increased much since then. Experts predict that the situation will change in a couple of years, when the cost of green and traditional data centers is approximately equal, and now only the giants of the IT industry can afford it. Greening existing data centers is quite difficult and expensive. All energy conservation and energy reuse systems must be designed in advance.

Having studied the wide world experience, my colleagues and I gathered together possible solutions to the problem, and the “from simple to complex” list presented below can serve as a roadmap for landscaping the IT industry.

• Structuring data. An interesting and obvious way to save is data deduplication. Such systems should allow you to optimize the amount of data so as not to duplicate each file, but to configure the routes by which you could get data from one store from anywhere. , «» . , , , . «» , , , , -.
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Another advanced technology is adiabatic cooling - by spraying water into small droplets and subsequent condensation.

• "Interior". Having wisely placed the equipment in the data center, it is possible to achieve optimal operation of engineering systems and increase energy efficiency. The most obvious option is to streamline the air flow. Warm and cold air has a different density. What to do next - the engineers will guess ... Rebuild the existing data center and move the equipment, avoiding the suspension of the system or even the fall of the site, is an impossible task. Therefore, this solution is more suitable for implementation in new data centers.
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  ○ Stimulating - a carrot for an environmentally responsible business, material incentives for environmentally responsible companies, for example, in the form of grants. But incentive policies (as opposed to prohibiting ones) should be implemented as early as possible. And then we have a chance to catch up with foreign experience, where a good half of IT companies already have some degree of green technology.

Companies did not immediately think about the environmental responsibility trend, and the implementation of such ideas requires time, deep thoughtfulness and a creative approach. “Clean” energy projects are expensive, so far giants with large capital can afford this opportunity. Green data centers require large investments, especially in the initial stages.

The risks associated with the changes should not be intimidating. The recoupment of projects for the “greening” of data centers is only a matter of time. Moreover, the process of transition to eco-energy is quite lengthy. On the other hand, the question is whether it is worth changing old data centers or designing completely new ones. Russian companies have a great opportunity to implement the second option by building new data centers in the northern latitudes of the country, in cold reservoirs with hydropower or in close proximity to them, as well as constructing solar or wind farms in desert territories.

Newcomers to the green community can take small steps toward increasing environmental responsibility. The first ones to start implementing the “green policy” will receive trump cards in the market.