Google Data Center Efficiency Best Practices Full Video
Summary
TLDRGoogle's data centers, crucial for delivering web services, are designed for energy and resource efficiency. Innovations in design have reduced energy usage by half compared to typical centers. Key practices include optimizing Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), managing airflow to prevent hot and cold air mixing, increasing cold aisle temperatures, utilizing free cooling, and minimizing power conversion stages. These strategies not only save millions in energy costs but are also applicable to data centers of all sizes, promoting sustainability.
Takeaways
- 🌐 Google prioritizes data center efficiency to deliver web services with minimal resource use.
- 🔍 Data centers can range from small closets to large warehouse-scale buildings filled with servers.
- 💡 Google has innovated in data center design to reduce energy, water, and other resource consumption.
- 🌡️ The ICT sector, including data centers, contributes about 2% to global greenhouse gas emissions, with data centers accounting for 0.15%.
- 🛠️ Energy-efficient design choices and best practices can significantly improve data center performance and reduce energy use.
- 📈 Google's efforts in data center efficiency have resulted in substantial energy savings, amounting to millions of dollars.
- 🔬 Measuring Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) is crucial for managing data center efficiency and should be done continuously.
- 🚫 Proper air flow management, including eliminating hot and cold air mixing, is essential for reducing energy load.
- 🌡️ Increasing the temperature in the cold aisle can save energy costs and is supported by ASHRAE guidelines up to 80 degrees Fahrenheit.
- 🌡️ Free cooling, which utilizes ambient temperatures, can significantly reduce the need for energy-intensive cooling equipment.
- 💧 Evaporative cooling and sea water cooling are examples of efficient water use in data centers, leading to substantial water savings.
- 🔌 Minimizing power conversion stages and using efficient power supplies can save energy and reduce costs in data centers.
- 🔄 Implementing these efficiency practices is cost-effective and can be applied to both small and large data centers.
Q & A
Why are data centers crucial for Google's operations?
-Data centers are essential for Google as they deliver all of their web services to users. They can range from small closets with a few machines to large-scale buildings optimized for power use and IT computing, housing thousands of servers.
What has Google done to innovate data center design and construction?
-Google has spent a significant amount of time innovating the design and construction of their data centers to minimize energy, water, and other resource usage, focusing on sustainability and efficiency.
How much energy does the ICT sector contribute to global greenhouse gas emissions?
-The ICT sector, which includes mobile phones, computers, monitors, cell phone towers, etc., contributes roughly about 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
What is the significance of the data center's energy usage in the ICT sector's total emissions?
-The data center portion of the ICT sector is responsible for about 15% of the total emissions within the sector.
What is the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and why is it important?
-PUE is the ratio of total facility energy to IT equipment energy within a data center. It measures how effectively power and cooling are delivered to the IT equipment. A lower PUE indicates more efficient energy use and is desirable.
What was the typical PUE of an enterprise data center in 2006 and what has changed since then at Google?
-In 2006, the typical PUE of an enterprise data center was 2.0. At Google, they have continuously improved their PUE, reaching a Time-Weighted Average (TTM) PUE of 1.16 over the last 12 months.
Why is it important to measure PUE frequently and over time?
-Frequent and time-based measurement of PUE provides meaningful results that reflect the actual operation of the data center. Snapshots in time can be misleading and do not accurately represent the data center's efficiency.
How does Google manage PUE measurements in their data centers?
-Google incorporates PUE measurements into their building management system across all sites, ensuring easy access to data and enabling efficient operation of their data centers.
What is the significance of managing air flow in a data center?
-Managing air flow is crucial for reducing the data center's energy load. It involves eliminating the mixing of hot and cold air, which can be achieved through various containment approaches and CFD analysis.
How does Google use thermal modeling to improve air flow in their data centers?
-Google uses thermal modeling to identify hot spots and understand how air flow is directed in their data centers. This helps them make simple design choices to improve air flow, such as using sheet metal extensions to increase intake to CRACs (Computer Room Air Conditioners).
What is the role of blanking panels in a data center and how do they contribute to energy savings?
-Blanking panels are used in the rack space where not all equipment is populated. They help create a tight environment, similar to weatherizing a house, preventing air from bypassing the IT equipment and thus improving cooling efficiency and saving energy costs.
Why is raising the temperature in the cold aisle of a data center beneficial?
-Raising the temperature in the cold aisle allows for more efficient cooling and reduces the need for heavy energy-consuming equipment like chillers. ASHRAE recommends running up to 80 degrees Fahrenheit, which Google implements, saving thousands of dollars in energy costs annually.
What is free cooling and how does Google utilize it in their data centers?
-Free cooling is the practice of using ambient temperatures outside the data center for cooling without operating energy-intensive equipment. Google uses free cooling in all their data centers, which is reflected in their PUE data and results in significant efficiency gains.
How does Google implement evaporative cooling in their European data centers?
-In Belgium, Google uses evaporative towers without chillers, taking advantage of local ambient conditions. In Finland, they use sea water cooling from the Bay of Finland, which cools the servers and then is tempered before returning to the bay, maintaining environmental balance.
What are some of the energy-efficient practices Google has implemented in their data centers?
-Google has implemented several practices, including eliminating conversion stages in power supply, using battery on board trays, and ensuring AC-DC power supplies are energy efficient, which collectively save over 30% per year per server.
How do the efficiency best practices mentioned in the script apply to data centers of different sizes?
-The efficiency best practices are applicable to both small and large data centers. They involve following five key steps to reduce energy use, making them a universal approach for improving data center efficiency.
Outlines
🌐 Energy Efficiency in Google's Data Centers
This paragraph discusses the significance of data centers at Google and their role in delivering web services. It highlights Google's efforts to innovate in data center design to reduce energy, water, and other resource usage. The speaker emphasizes the importance of adhering to best practices for energy efficiency, which have resulted in Google using half the energy of a typical data center. The paragraph introduces the concept of Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) as a measure of energy efficiency and mentions Google's impressive PUE of 1.16, which indicates a highly efficient data center operation. The speaker also stresses the importance of continuous measurement for meaningful results and the incorporation of PUE measurements into building management systems.
🛠️ Best Practices for Data Center Efficiency
The second paragraph delves into specific best practices for improving data center efficiency. It starts with managing air flow to prevent the mixing of hot and cold air, using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis to model and improve airflow. The use of cost-effective solutions like meat locker curtains and sheet metal doors to create hot and cold aisle containment is mentioned. The paragraph also addresses the misconception that data centers need to be kept cold, citing ASHRAE guidelines that recommend operating temperatures up to 80 degrees Fahrenheit, which Google follows. The benefits of free cooling, which utilizes ambient temperatures for cooling without heavy energy-consuming equipment, are discussed, along with the use of evaporative cooling and sea water cooling in Google's European data centers. The paragraph concludes with the importance of minimizing power conversion stages and using efficient power supplies to save energy, and it underscores the cost-effectiveness and applicability of these best practices to data centers of all sizes.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Data Centers
💡Energy Efficiency
💡Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE)
💡ICT Sector
💡Airflow Management
💡Hot and Cold Aisles
💡Blanking Panels
💡Free Cooling
💡Evaporative Cooling
💡UPS System
💡AC-DC Power Supply
Highlights
Google data centers are critical for delivering web services.
Data centers range from small closets with a few machines to large warehouse-scale buildings.
Google has innovated the design and construction of data centers to minimize energy, water, and resource use.
Google's data centers use half the energy of typical data centers.
The ICT sector is responsible for about 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions, with data centers contributing 15% of that.
Implementing best practices in energy efficiency can significantly improve data center performance.
Google's energy efficiency practices save millions of dollars annually.
Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) is crucial for measuring data center efficiency, with Google achieving a PUE of 1.16.
Regular PUE measurements are important for accurate and meaningful results.
Airflow management, particularly eliminating the mixing of hot and cold air, is key to reducing energy load.
CFD analysis helps model airflow and make design improvements in data centers.
Simple retrofits, like meat locker curtains and sheet metal doors, can significantly enhance airflow management.
Raising cold aisle temperatures to recommended levels (up to 80°F) can save thousands of dollars in energy costs.
Free cooling, utilizing ambient temperatures, can yield substantial efficiency gains.
Eliminating unnecessary power conversion stages and using efficient components can reduce energy consumption.
Google's on-board battery approach eliminates multiple conversion steps, enhancing energy efficiency.
Efficient power supplies, such as those with Energy Star labels, can further reduce energy use.
Google saves over $30 per server annually through these efficiency measures.
Many efficiency practices are cost-effective within 12 months and applicable to both small and large data centers.
Transcripts
[Music]
here at google
data centers are very very important to
us they are how we deliver all of our
web services to
all of our users and data center can
mean a variety of things it can mean a
small closet filled with a couple of
machines all the way to very large
warehouse scale
buildings that are optimized for power
use and
i.t computing and filled with thousands
of servers and google we've spent a lot
of time
innovating the way in which we design
and build these facilities
to minimize the amount of energy and
water and other resources that these
computing facilities use
in terms of the results of all of the
work that we've been doing
over many many years now who use half
the energy
of the typical data center to put things
into perspective the entire ict sector
that includes mobile phones computers
monitors cell phone towers
is roughly about two percent of global
greenhouse gas emissions
of that two percent the data center
portion is responsible for about 15
there's design choices that you can make
for energy efficiency that improve
right the performance of your data
center and these things are just best
practices and adhering
well to best practices that's how you
can actually make the most improvements
in terms of energy use
the results of these types of activities
return google
millions of dollars in energy savings so
the results are significant
we've invited several members of our
data center team here to explain some of
these best practices
to all of you
the first step in managing the
efficiency of your data center is to
make sure you have the instrumentation
in place
to measure the pue or power usage
effectiveness
pue is the ratio of total facility
energy to i.t equipment energy within
your data center
it's a measure of how effectively you
deliver power and cooling to the it
equipment
in 2006 the typical pue of an enterprise
data center was 2.0 which means
for every one watt of i.t energy
consumed one watt of overhead was
consumed by the facility to deliver the
power and cooling
reducing the overhead is really what you
want you want pue to get to as close to
1.0 as possible
over the last 12 months our ttm pue was
1.16
we've continuously measured that and has
gone down nearly every quarter since we
began reporting it back in 2008.
last quarter the lowest data center was
1.09
ideally you should measure it as fast as
you can as often as you can
every second or so and the more often
you can measure it the
more meaningful the results will be it's
important to
you measure pue over the course of a
year annually or quarterly
to get meaningful results if you just
take snapshots in time
the information won't be realistic and
it won't
really be an actual measure of how well
your data center is operating
one way to make it easier to manage is
incorporate the pue measurements into
your building management system
we do this all of our sites at google
without having easy access to this data
we wouldn't be able to operate our data
centers as efficiently as we do
once you have the ability to measure and
manage your pue the first step in terms
of reducing your data center energy load
is to focus on the management of the air
flow
the most important thing here is to
eliminate the mixing of the hot and the
cold
air and there's no one right way to do
this containment can be achieved through
many different approaches
one thing that we found very useful at
google is cfd analysis to see
where are your hot spots and how is your
airflow going to actually
be directed in your data center by doing
so you can actually model the way in
which airflow will go and it helps you
make very simple design choices to
improve the airflow in your data center
for example in one of our computing and
networking rooms we call them cnrs
we actually did some thermal modeling to
see exactly what airflow was doing
through that modeling we realized that
the intake to our cracks was too low
and that by simply piecing together some
sheet metal we could create extensions
it would dramatically increase the
airflow quality
into the cracks we also did a bunch of
other retrofits
here in this corporate data center at
google we've implemented
meat locker curtains that are very
inexpensive and easy to install
these are hung from the overhead
structure and they separate
the cold aisle which is actually hot in
the hot aisle
which is actually hotter we are set now
to enter the hot aisle containment
door and we we incorporated the simple
inexpensive sheet metal doors
to separate very tightly
the cold aisle from the hot aisle now
over here
we've got the hot air from the racks are
coming up
going overhead up through the returner
plenum back to the crack units to give
you a nice high
temperature differential across your
pregnancy
a very important step is to
the rack space where you don't quite
have all of your equipment populated and
it's very easy to do
with these blanking panels it's almost
like weatherizing your house
make sure that you've got a nice tight
environment
all told we spent about twenty five
thousand dollars in parts and those
twenty five thousand dollars saved us
over sixty five thousand dollars in
energy costs
yearly
[Music]
once you manage your airflow properly
the next step in data center efficiency
is to increase the temperature of your
cold aisle
it's long been believed by many data
center operators that the data center
has to be cold
to keep all the equipment at a
temperature that it will run safely at
and in fact that's just false so if you
look at recommended guidelines from
ashrae
they recommend you running all the way
up to 80 degrees fahrenheit
and at google that's exactly what we do
we've got a small
corporate data center here it's about
200 kilowatts of load
simply raising the temperature from 72
degrees to 80 degrees
saves us thousands of dollars in energy
costs every single year
what's nice about that is it also allows
our employees to come to work
in shorts
[Music]
whenever possible we'd recommend people
to free cool
pre-cool means utilizing ambient
temperatures outside of your data center
to be able to provide cooling without
operating very heavy energy consuming
equipment like chillers
we use free cooling at all of our data
centers and you can see this in our
publicly reported pue data where the pub
values go up
in the summer time and down in the
winter time and this is just a
reality of running your our operations
with
free cooling and it yields tremendous
efficiency gains
in europe we have two data centers that
have no chillers
whatsoever we're able to take advantage
of the local constraints and
conditions in belgium we use evaporative
towers
without any chillers given the ambient
conditions
in finland we use sea water cooling sea
water from the bay of finland
cools the servers and then we temper the
water returning to the bay of finland so
there's no
temperature gradients returning to the
bay evaporative cooling
uses water on site but what we found
through our studies is that
by the use of evaporative cooling in a
very efficient fashion we save water
on the whole so for every gallon of
water we use in the evaporative cooling
plants
we eliminate the use of two gallons of
water on the energy production side
so this translates into hundreds of
millions of gallons per year in water
savings
there's no one right way to deliver free
cooling
the important point is that you should
examine these opportunities and take
advantage of them
to eliminate or reduce substantially the
mechanical cooling
in a data center you pull power in from
the electrical grid
and you convert it down to the voltages
that are needed for all the components
in the data center
and there's a lot of conversion stages
in there by minimizing those conversion
stages you can
save money and save energy also by
making each conversion stage more
efficient
you can save energy as well
traditionally one of the
the big losses is the ups system the
uninterruptible power supply
typically there's a giant room of
batteries batteries are dc voltage and
the power coming in to charge those
batteries is ac
and so you need to convert the ac down
to dc with a rectifier
in order to charge the batteries and
then when the batteries are needed in a
power event you need to convert that
back to ac with an inverter
and then the ac needs to be converted
back down to dc for all the components
in the data center
so you've got three conversion stages in
there that are not necessary
what google has done is put a battery on
board the tray so you're eliminating
those three conversion steps you just
have dc right into the server components
in a typical server configuration you
have a server with an ac dc power supply
attached to it by making sure that ac dc
power supply is efficient
you can save a lot of energy things like
energy star labels will point you to
power supplies that are 90 plus percent
efficient
google is able to save over 30 per year
per server by implementing all of these
features
there really are very simple effective
approaches that all of us can implement
to reduce
the data center energy use and most of
them are cost effective within 12 months
of operation
so a lot of efficiency best practices
should be adopted by just about everyone
they're applicable to small data centers
or large data centers
it's simply following the five steps
that we go through here
to make sure that you're able to reduce
your energy use
[Music]
you
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