Datacenters can be chilled without electric power
By Saheer Karimbayil   |   Tuesday, 20 January 2009, 16:06 IST   |    5 Comments
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Datacenters can be chilled without electric power
Bangalore: In the past, it would have been considered ridiculous for somebody to say that datacenters should be moved to polar regions to be kept cool. But today, with the size and magnitude of computing increasing explosively, such options are vehemently considered for future datacenter needs. As almost 50 percent of the power that reached a datacenter is consumed for cooling the device, a control on this will help reduce the energy consumption significantly, especially as the industry is talking about green IT with an unprecedented enthusiasm. Experts suggest that massive measures have to be taken to cut down electric power, which is needed for cooling these data centers. According to Ramkumar Kothandaraman, Director of Microsoft Technology Center, an option is to utilize gifts of nature like wind chilling seasons. While participating in a panel discussion at Great CIO conference in Bangalore, he referred to Microsoft's datacenter in Chicago that lets cold wind inside to cool the device and does not consume any amount of energy for its cooling purpose. Earlier, San Francisco based Advanced Data Centers, an owner and operator of datacenters, had announced that it had opened a 41,000 square foot datacenter outside Sacramento, where the nights are cool, and hence help chill the device. ADC's McClellan datacenter, a 15-foot high, 100-foot long section of the datacenter lets outside air into the device to cool it when the temperature conditions are right. And because of the temperate weather in the Sacramento area, outside air can cool this datacenter 75 percent of the time. Another technology advancement that has already happened in this area is a fusion of sensor networks and virtualization that helps keep several datacenters connected to each other. The system also facilitates a communication between datacenters in the network. The sensors installed around each datacenter grasp signals when a device in a network over heats, and then they send signals to stop processes in that device and shift all its computing activities to another datacenter that remains cool in the same network. Such timely interventions by sensors make sure that no datacenter 'massively' consumes electricity to cool it. Consider Jammu and Kashmir, the northern state of the Indian union with two capitals. The state activities are based in Jammu during winter and in Srinagar during summer due to extreme temperature variations. This means even inhabited regions of India have such extreme temperature variations. So, why can't we utilize the geographical features of the country to green the IT sector by setting up datacenters in different areas and keep them networked, and thereby keep on shifting computing processes to one after the other devices as weather varies?

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