A Blueprint for Data Center Efficiency

Key Facts

• In 2004, EMC faced explosive growth in applications, servers, and storage in its five worldwide data centers. With space, power, and cooling reaching the limits of the current infrastructure, EMC's IT organization was faced with the prospect of an expensive data center upgrade. This report explores the results of three continuing IT initiatives that have enabled EMC to deliver increased efficiency and reduced costs—without a data center upgrade.
• • Improved data center efficiency:
  • Hot and cold aisle design with a goal of eliminating hot spots
  • Hot air return plenum for a more efficient removal of heated air
  • More efficient Computer Room Air Conditioning (CRAC) units
  • Filler panels over rack units with no equipment installed
    
  • Floor pillows to reduce wasted air flow around cables
  • Selective in-row cooling
  • Ultrasonic humidification
  • Monthly CFD analysis to identify and rectify hot spots with vented floor tiles
  • Move from high-end EMC Symmetrix storage array (plus second tier of modular EMC CLARiiON arrays) to tiered storage infrastructure with 5 tiers, including a CLARiiON disk library. The Tier 1 drive consumes more than seven times the amount of power than the Tier 4 drive, because it is designed to emphasize performance over capacity.
  • Increased storage utilization through VMware virtualization software, consolidating 1250 servers down to just 250.

• The project took 60 months to implement
• 
  Space savings resulted in $0.36M annual savings (50% reduction from Q1'04 to Q4'08).
• The actual (or projected) savings from the project are

  $74M in data center, storage, and server savings (by avoiding new DC construction), $10 million in data center power, cooling, and space savings over past 5 years cumulative.

  Total savings of $7.5M in power and $4.5M in cooling (63% improvement in each) cumulative.

  Calculations:

  DC efficiency: power from $3.7M to $1.2M, cooling from $2.5M to $0.8M

  Storage: power from $5.8M to $2.6M, cooling from $3.2M to $1.4M

  Virtualization: power from $2.5M to $0.7 M, cooling from $1.5M to $0.5 M

  Total: power from $12.0M to $4.5M, cooling from $7.2M to $2.7M (63% savings each)
  

• The primary sponsor for the project was Jon Peirce - VP IT, Global Infrastructure Services.

What was the impact?

• Did you use a specific methodology or third party to calculate CO2e or KWh savings?

  EMC used a model that calculates both the CO2e & KWh savings. The model uses Uptime Institute Tier methodology as well as actual power usage from companies like APC.
• 38,000,000KWh of energy have been saved on this project
• This saving will be made over 60 months

• Comments on energy savings

  Data center energy efficiency increased by 34%, storage utilization increased by 19%, and consolidated server environment consumes 70% less power, and 70% less cooling.
• 27,300,000 Kg CO₂e has been saved on this project , over a period of 60 months
• The project has internal verification for results

Making it Happen

• Barriers experienced during the initiation of the project