LEED versus PUE
At ServInt, we take our commitment to the environment very seriously. If you read the ServInt Source you’ve seen me periodically write on our green initiatives, and I am happy to report that some of the efforts our industry is making seem to be having a positive effect. EPA predictions of data center power usage made back in 2007 have not come to pass. This is in no small part due to increased efficiencies in data centers and server technology.
It is perfectly reasonable for people to be skeptical of green initiatives in data centers. The phrase “lipstick on a pig” is practically custom-built to describe data center efficiency initiatives. Energy consumption is a growing environmental and geopolitical problem, and data centers just plain use an incredible amount of energy. But let’s get real – if something new gets built these days and it creates jobs and commerce around it, the chances are good that it’s either Internet based or has a large Internet component. That requires infrastructure. And for those of you thinking that ‘the cloud’ is going to solve all that I hate to burst your bubble, but ‘the cloud’ is still computers plugged into power outlets living in a datacenter, just like before. And an incredible number of additional computers are getting added every second.
So since data centers aren’t going anywhere and are just getting bigger, it’s better that infrastructure folks focus on efficiency and on doing what they can to make their footprint as small as possible. But how do customers know their servers are housed and powered in facilities as Green as hosting providers promise?
When people think of green initiatives in data centers within the United States they usually think of the LEED program, run by the U.S. Green Building Council. LEED stands for “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design”. The USGBC people who run LEED have done a great job of getting their names out there, and you see a lot of building projects these days that tout Silver, Gold & Platinum LEED building projects.
USGPC does some great work, but people have started using LEED certification as shorthand for whether data centers are ‘green’ or not, and that’s really a mistake. LEED programs have historically only certified new construction. So if you’re building a brand new data center, LEED is great and provides a set of guidelines to aspire to, but if your servers are housed in a facility that was retrofitted as data center space—as many data centers are—then LEED certification does not apply. USGBC is trying to fix this with their LEED for Existing Buildings rating system, but LEED-EB only works for certain types of buildings and ends up being—along with LEED as well—fairly process- rather than results-oriented.
Simply put, LEED is a set of green building best practices, but does not measure the actual environmental impact of the data center after it is up and running. That’s why I don’t tend to pay attention to LEED, as cool as it is. Instead I go straight to the PUE number for a data center space and the efforts taken to lower that number.
PUE stands for Power Usage Effectiveness and was developed by an organization called The Green Grid.
PUE is a results-oriented metric that quantifies how efficient a data center is when it comes to cooling and infrastructure. And aside from the electricity used directly to run the servers, when we’re talking about power usage in a data center, we’re talking about cooling.
We get asked whether we’re LEED certified in our data centers. We’re not, simply because our data centers are housed in facilities that predate LEED. But a good PUE-optimized data center in a repurposed building can trump a Gold certified datacenter if it’s done right. This is part of the reason we have partnered with Coresite for our main private data center builds in Northern Virginia, DC, and LA. Every Coresite facility maintains a low PUE number with some as low as 1.3.
There’s nothing wrong with LEED, it just doesn’t measure everybody. And it’s an indicator of process, not results. For results you need to ask about PUE.
Photo by Wonderlane
ServInt’s New Data Center and Our Green Commitment
We just announced the opening of our newest data center, and as I write this, I’m looking at some pictures of the new facility. Next to these are some other photos of trees being planted. We just completed our 2011 carbon footprint reassessment and have upped our commitments to reforestation through our partners at American Forests.
There’s something funny about seeing pictures of trees being planted next to shots of our new data center in Reston, VA: on the one hand, I’m looking at tender young saplings lovingly held and planted in the soil; on the other, I see stark, white walls, massive industrial cooling units, and rows and rows of server racks.
By the visual alone, you might think that data center space is the most un-Green part of a hosting company’s operation. And while this can be true for a company without a serious commitment to the environment, choice of data center facility and build-out has some of the greatest Green potential of anything we do. That’s one of the reasons we chose to build out our private data center the way we did.
In previous posts, I’ve gone into detail about how the server hardware choices ServInt makes have a huge impact on decreasing our carbon footprint. This is true now more than ever. As a basic example, in the last five years the number of cpu cores we can pack into a single rack of data center space for about the same price has multiplied roughly five-fold while the power consumption and cooling needs for that same rack have remained constant. (And this example does not even factor in the increased processing power of each core!) Committing to purchasing and deploying this new, more efficient hardware greatly reduces out power-to-customer ratio and keeps our carbon footprint in check.
But hardware is just one step. As we maximize the processing power in a rack, we also have to efficiently house and cool that rack. This is where the design of a datacenter really plays into shrinking our carbon footprint. As a general rule, the power required to cool and house servers is typically equal to 30 to 50 percent of the power needed to simply run those servers. Once you’ve picked your hardware platform, keeping the electrical requirements of cooling and infrastructure down is a central Green goal for environmentally sensitive hosts.
In most circles, air conditioning is not simply the punching bag of the Green movement, it is the devil itself. Nothing captures the essence of un-Green like the notion of cooling the interior of a building by literally pumping heat into the outside air… using fossil fuels… and leaving the windows open. But in intelligently designed, purpose-built data centers, we’re talking about well insulated, windowless rooms that are far more efficient than normal office or residential space. Still, when these rooms are filled with servers they can demand more than 40 times the cooling as the same amount of space in a typical residential home. There is simply no other way to keep servers from literally melting down than blasting cold air at them. Our business is hosting, but our byproduct is heat.
The modern data center facility helps greatly in minimizing the build-up of heat and efficiently removing it. From hot and cold aisles and forcing air directly to racks under raised floors to huge heat exchangers that tap into the cold air on a winter day and smart cooling units that are adaptive and work in sync to spool up or down as needed throughout a facility, engineers have come up with some downright ingenious solutions to efficiently deliver cold air to hot servers. And all these improvements have one goal: to reduce the electricity it takes to keep those cpu cores cool.
All of these and many other factors went into our decision about what type of new data center we would open. And they are just a few of the elements of our much larger Green Hosting Initiative, including the trees American Forests is continually planting to offset the carbon we cannot reduce directly.
If you’d like to see some pictures of our datacenters or some of the tree planting we have sponsored in recent years, check them out in our photos section on Facebook.
ServInt opens the Doors on its Newest Data Center
It’s been a hectic first quarter here at ServInt. We’re in the middle of a lot of very exciting improvements and new services slated to launch in 2011. And today marks the first. We have just completed build-out and opened the doors of our newest datacenter.
The Northern Virginia facility joins our Downtown DC and McLean data centers as part of the greater ServInt DC infrastructure. Not only does this new facility provide the room to grow that we require as we continue to expand our customer base and product lines, but its location along the area’s primary fiber routes augments our network infrastructure and connectivity at the same time.
If you’re interested in more of the specifics of our newest data center, take minute to check out our press release. And if you’re a current customer and want to know a little bit more about what this new facility means to you visit your customer portal for more details.
Engineering is beyond the network
Hi, I’m Kevin Nicastro, ServInt’s New Director of Engineering.
After joining ServInt in 2004, I was appointed as ServInt’s lead network architect. Alongside my colleagues in our Managed Services and Provisioning Teams, we helped create the VPS, SuperVPS, and Solo Series servers many of you enjoy today. We also created ServInt’s incredibly fast, robust and reliable network, which I am extremely proud of.
Today, as head of ServInt’s Engineering Department, my team and I are tasked with developing, building, and maintaining our products and network. In this post, I’ll talk a little bit about our operating philosophy, and further explain ServInt’s strategy for improving our connectivity all over the world.
Data Centers and Your Hosting Business
Free Tip: Invest in cable management.
The data center is the most important tool in a web host’s arsenal.
That might sound painfully obvious, and it is, but for those looking to get into this industry it’s an important item to remember. Competitors brag about which bits of software they use to push product out the door but they often forget to mention the necessity of maintaining a powerful, scaleable, stay-in-business-able data center to actually store that information.
After our most recent expansion into ServInt LA, I thought I’d share a few insights into the choices we had to make when building our infrastructure to give folks a better understanding of our corporate goals as well as offer advice to those looking to get into the hosting biz.
Here goes.
More after the jump…
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