LogicalSolutions.net’s Green Meter
When the LogicalSolutions team took on the project of designing a new Data Center our goal was to build a facility that was reliable, secure and one that would make our people and our client’s proud. We started by taking the lessons that we have learned firsthand from operating Data Centers for over 14 years, and combined that experience with state of the art designs and technologies from around the world. After reviewing all of this material, the area that we saw the greatest opportunity for advancement in was power management and energy efficiency.
The computer industry is currently faced with exponentially increasing operating cost as newer more powerful hardware consume more power per server multiplied with the increasing cost of energy. Last year alone U.S. Data Centers consumed about 80 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh), roughly 2 percent of total U.S. electricity consumption and it is estimated that this figure will double over the next 5 years. In order to combat this trend of increasing cost both for our clients and the environment, EarthLink selected only the most efficient power distribution and cooling technologies available; but this was only the first step.
To measure the efficiency of a Data Center the industry uses a metric called PUE. It stands for Power Usage Effectiveness which is a fancy name for a ratio that represents the total power coming into the Data Center divided by the amount of power used by the servers. Over the last 3 months our team has created a Green Meter that calculates the efficiency of our Data Center in real-time, utilizing the network of revenue grade power meters that we have installed on all of our equipment. This tool has enabled us to tune our systems, which in turn, increased the efficiency of our Data Center by an additional 15%. This tool also helped us realize that the efficiency of our Data Center is directly tied to outside air temperature. As it gets cooler outside it takes less energy to keep the servers cool therefore we are able to increase the percentage of our total power usage that goes to the servers. For every degree we are below 80F the Data Center operates approximately 1% more efficient. With the annual mean temperature of Rochester being 48 degrees Fahrenheit, combined with reasonable electric rates and great fiber paths in and out of the region, it makes upstate New York an ideal location for Data Centers. Also evidenced by Yahoo’s decision to build their next Data Center near Buffalo.
What does all of this mean for our clients? EarthLink is currently the only Data Center in upstate New York and one of the few in the country that offers revenue grade power metering for all of our electrical circuits. By utilizing this branch circuit monitoring system, we are able to provide our colocation clients with variable rate pricing for electricity based on actual KWh consumed. This billing system saves our clients money and rewards them for being responsible with their power usage.
