Data centers in the 21st Century

IBM's research labs - Cooling techniques

Cabinets are fitted with rear-door heat exchangers, which suck in the hot exhaust air of the servers and blast it out again as cold air. The technology - the IP is owned by IBM - can take away up to 60 percent of the heat in a full rack, the company claims.

The result of these changes is a datacentre PUE (power usage effectiveness) of 1.27, which generated a return on IBM's investment within 10 months.

See Cool runnings: IBM's recipe for a happy datacentre, in pictures by Jon Yeomans

IBM's research labs in Poughkeepsie, New York

Racks and cable view

See Cool runnings: IBM's recipe for a happy datacentre, in pictures by Jon Yeomans

Equinix 1

Equinix is a provider of global data center solutions.

View of overhead cabling infrastructure inside the Equinix SE3 data center facility in Seattle, WA.

Photo Credit: Equinix

Equinix 2

View of customer cages inside the Equinix SE3 data center facility in Seattle, WA.

Photo Credit: Equinix

Equinix 3

Exterior view of the Equinix SE3 data center facility in Seattle, WA.

Photo Credit: Equinix

Easy Street data center

theEasyStreet, an IaaS provider, offsets all resources it consumes, resulting in zero carbon footprint operations in its Beaverton, OR data centers and offices. EasyStreet’s newest data center represents nearly four years’ research and design equity to build the most energy-efficient colocation facility in the region. Energy-saving technologies such as Indirect Evaporative Cooling and chimney cabinets reduce costs as well as carbon emissions while directing more power to customer cabinets.

Photo Credit: EasyStreet

Easy Street machine room

An innovative Indirect Evaporative Cooling (IEC) system from AMAX® is key to efficiency. Direct Expansion (DX) packages provide supplemental cooling when required. (Estimated need is only 180 hours per year.)

Photo Credit: EasyStreet

Easy Street rooftop IEC

• Rooftop IEC units use an N+1 configuration.
• Each IEC unit is connected to a shared supply and return trunk, allowing any spare unit to replace any failed unit.
• Humidity is controlled with ultrasonic humidifiers operated by the master control system.
• Overhead duct work distributes cooled air throughout the data center.
• The equipment cabinets are part of the cooling system. Chatsworth Products, Inc. (CPI) passive chimney cabinets are connected to the overhead return air duct work. They gather hot exhaust air and route it to the roof for processing.
• A 25,000-gallon underground tank collects rainwater from the roof and supplies an estimated seven months of annual operation. It is filtered and used by the IEC units to cool the hot air exhausted through the return duct. Reclaimed water is supplemented by city water when necessary.
• Efficient Uninterruptible VYCON® Power Supplies (UPSs) use flywheels as their power source and require no acid-containing batteries.

Photo Credit: EasyStreet

Submerged data center

Submerging your data center in fluid is definitely a next-generation method of temperature-control, but as ZDNet's David Chernicoff reported in "Submerge your data center," it is an intriguing option. Basically, specially designed server racks are submerged in a "dialectric" fluid, very similar to mineral oil. System fans aren't needed, hard drives are encapsulated and airtight, and the thermal grease between the CPU/GPU and heat sink is replaced by Indium foil.

Cold War bunker turned cloud data center

Another innovation in data center design puts old infrastructure to new use. In this case, a Cold War bunker in Switzerland was refitted to hold Radix Technologies cloud data center. Dug into Alpine rock, this installation was built to withstand nuclear blasts and features steel doors and reinforced concrete walls. Pictured here is an access tunnel between technology corridors. This is part of Toby Wolpe's gallery, "Inside the Cold War bunker that's now a cloud datacentre," where you can view more photos of this former military site.

NextFort Data Center (Chandler, Arizona) - Server corridor

The NextFort High-density Computing Suite (NextFort HCS^TM) is a completely self-contained, all concrete and steel room designed to house up to 20 high-density IT racks for a total IT load of up to 225KW. 

Physical Specifications

• All concrete and steel construction
• Secondary concrete perimeter wall
• Single row of 20 45U high density 19" IT racks
• Isolated hot and cold aisles

Photo Credit: NextFort

Take a virtual tour of the Chandler Data Center

NextFort - Cold aisle

Photo Credit: NextFort

Take a virtual tour of the Chandler Data Center

NextFort - Hot aisle

Photo Credit: NextFort

Take a virtual tour of the Chandler Data Center

NextFort suite diagram

Electrical & Cooling

• Up to 225KW IT load per suite (up to 600W per square foot)
• 2N redundant electrical feeds with separate individually metered panels
• Up to 60 tons of dedicated redundant ultra-efficient DX cooling
• 100% free air capability based on outside conditions
• Better than 1.25 PUE 

Fire Suppression

• Independent clean agent gas-based suppression system in 
  each suite
• No water-based fire sprinklers

Management & Control

• Secure web-based customer portal to manage environmental settings (temperature, humidity, outside air control), physical access and security cameras, and to monitor power usage in the suite

Photo Credit: NextFort

Take a virtual tour of the Chandler Data Center

Verne Global data center complex in Iceland

The 45-acre Verne Global data centre complex is located near Reykjavik, Iceland, minutes from Keflavík International Airport. The facility is situated on the site of the former Naval Air Station Keflavik, a key strategic NATO base for over 50 years and chosen for its extremely low risk of natural disaster. Located well to the west of all of Iceland's volcanic activity, arctic breezes and the Gulf Stream push volcanic effects away from the Verne Global site and toward Western Europe.

Photo Credit: Verne Global

Geothermal valve - Verne Global

Verne Global’s facility has been designed to fully utilise Iceland’s unique environmental power advantages: 100% powered by renewable energy resources and 100% cooled by the natural environment of Iceland, without the use of chillers or compressors.

All electricity comes from 100% renewable, geothermal and hydroelectric energy. Iceland is the only country in Western Europe that still has large indigenous amounts of competitively-priced hydroelectric and geothermal energy remaining to be harnessed. 

Photo Credit: Verne Global

Verne Global data center entrance

High security features include:

•  24x7 manned security force with roving patrol
• Single point of entry, lobby with ballistic-resistant glass
• Nine challenge points to reach data center with multiple mantraps

Photo Credit: Verne Global

Verne Global secure cabinets

Photo Credit: Verne Global

Digital Realty in Western Sydney - Modular datacentre approach

The 8,020-square metre facility contains four 1440kW Digital Realty Turn-Key Flex pods, a modular product to provide flexibility for customers to scale their capacity. 

Photo Credit: Digital Realty

See Digital Realty officially launches Western Sydney datacentre by Spandas Lui

Digitial Realty in London - Five halls

Each data hall has staging workspace for technical operations, with lift access, power and cooling facilities throughout. The vast data halls are also kept cool with the help of 14 CRAC (computer room air conditioning) units that can be found operating in an N+2 configuration (providing back ups) in each of the 1,000 square foot pristine data halls. 

The datacentre halls are raised 4m above ground level and have an 800mm raised floor. The floor can take loads of up to 12.5KN/m².

See A photo tour of Digital Realty's newest London datacentre by Sam Shead (ZDNet)

Rackspace in the UK

Rackspace's Slough-based datacentre houses the hardware for its UK cloud, along with the other servers rented by its customers. It has 1,600 racks in place, of which 120 support its cloud.

Rackspace's server hardware is predominantly supplied by Dell. It operates a multi-vendor networking approach: Cisco is the predominant provider of switching technology, while Juniper Networks supplies backbone services and Brocade provides equipment for load balancing.

Photo credit: Jack Clark 

See Inside Rackspace's UK cloud datacentre for more photos.

Rackspace cooling system

The datacentre has a power usage effectiveness (PUE) rating of 1.7, though Rackspace hopes to lower this to an average of 1.59 once the third data hall is built.

Cooling is achieved via computer room air-conditioning (Crac) units that pass cold air through the underfloor plenum. The current is then lifted into the servers and expelled as hot air at the back. Unlike numerous other datacentres, the racks are not enclosed.

Photo credit: Jack Clark 

See Inside Rackspace's UK cloud datacentre for more photos.

Virtus security controls

Datacentre security is vital: there are biometric readers and secure mantraps on both levels of the datacentre that control access to the datahalls and are programmed so that the first set of doors must close before the second set opens. Each door has a proximity card reader that is pre-programmed with a client's access information.  

See From warehouse to (data)warehouse: Virtus keeps it cool in North London by Sam Shead

Las Vegas Sands

The Las Vegas Sands Corporation runs two casino resorts in the gambling mecca, the Venetian and the Palazzo.

The two establishments run off the same infrastructure, which uses 300 servers to support more than 11,000 suites and rooms, 3,000 slot machines and 200 gambling tables, and run nine websites. The bulk of the Venetian and Palazzo's core systems run on six IBM's iSeries servers (pictured), formerly known as AS/400s.

Photo Credit: David Meyer 

See Datacentres of the world: A photo tour by ZDNet Staff