research-article

Towards a net-zero data center

Authors:

Prithviraj Banerjee,

Chandrakant Patel,

Martin ArlittAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Journal on Emerging Technologies in Computing Systems (JETC), Volume 8, Issue 4

Article No.: 27, Pages 1 - 39

https://doi.org/10.1145/2367736.2367738

Published: 30 November 2012 Publication History

Abstract

A world consisting of billions of service-oriented client devices and thousands of data centers can deliver a diverse range of services, from social networking to management of our natural resources. However, these services must scale in order to meet the fundamental needs of society. To enable such scaling, the total cost of ownership of the data centers that host the services and comprise the vast majority of service delivery costs will need to be reduced. As energy drives the total cost of ownership of data centers, there is a need for a new paradigm in design and management of data centers that minimizes energy used across their lifetimes, from “cradle to cradle”. This tutorial article presents a blueprint for a “net-zero data center”: one that offsets any electricity used from the grid via adequate on-site power generation that gets fed back to the grid at a later time. We discuss how such a data center addresses the total cost of ownership, illustrating that contrary to the oft-held view of sustainability as “paying more to be green”, sustainable data centers—built on a framework that focuses on integrating supply and demand management from end-to-end—can concurrently lead to lowest cost and lowest environmental impact.

References

[1]

Amin, S. M. 2009. Smart grid: Opportunities and challenges. In Proceedings of the MIT Energy Conference: Accelerating Change in Global Energy.

[2]

Amin, S. M. and Wollenberg, B. F. 2005. Toward a smart grid: Power delivery for the 21^st century. IEEE Power Energy 3, 5, 34--41.

[3]

Barroso, L. and Holzle, U. 2007. The case for energy proportional computing. IEEE Comput. 40, 12.

Digital Library

[4]

Bash, C. E., Patel, C., and Sharma, R. K. 2003. Efficient thermal management of data centers -- Immediate and long-term research needs. Int. J. HVAC R. Res. 9, 2.

[5]

Bash, C. E., Patel, C. D., and Sharma, R. K. 2006. Dynamic thermal management of air cooled data centers. In Proceedings of the 10^th Conference on Thermal and Thermomech Phenomena in Electronic Systems (ITHERM'06).

[6]

Bash, C. and Forman, G. 2007. Cool job allocation: Measuring the power savings of placing jobs at cooling-efficient locations in the data center. In Proceedings of the USENIX Annual Technical Conference.

Digital Library

[7]

Bash, C., Hyser, C., and Hoover, C. 2009. Thermal policies and active workload migration with data centers. In Proceedings of the ASME/Pacific Rim Technical Conference and Exhibition on Packaging and Integration of Electronic and Photonic Systems, MEMS, and NEMS (InterPACK'09).

[8]

Beitelmal, M. H. and Patel, C. 2007. Thermo-Fluids provisioning of high performance high density data center. Distrib. Parallel Datab. 21, 227--238.

Digital Library

[9]

Beitelmal, M. H., Wang, Z., Felix, C., Bash, C., Hoover, C., and McReynolds, A. 2009. Local cooling control of data centers with adaptive vent tiles. In Proceedings of the ASME/Pacific Rim Technical Conference and Exhibition on Packaging and Integration of Electronic and Photonic Systems, MEMS, and NEMS (InterPACK'09).

[10]

Bejan, A. 1997. Advanced Engineering Thermodynamics 2^nd Ed. John Wiley & Sons, New York.

[11]

Belady, C. 2007. In the data center, power and cooling costs more than it equipment it supports. Electron. Cool.

[12]

Breen, T. J., Walsh, E. J., Punch, J., Bash, C. E., and Shah, A. J. 2010. From chip to cooling tower data center modeling: Part I, Influence of server inlet temperature and temperature rise across cabinet. In Proceedings of the 12^th Conference on Thermal and Thermomech Phenomena in Electronic Systems (ITHERM'10).

[13]

Breur, W., Povh, D., Retzmann, D., Urbanke, Ch., and Weinhold, M. 2007. Prospects of smart grid technologies for a sustainable and secure power supply. In Proceedings of the 20^th World Energy Congress and Exhibition.

[14]

Carlsson, N. and Arlitt, M. 2011. Towards more effective use of computer systems. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Performance Engineering (ICPE'11).

Digital Library

[15]

Çengel, Y. A. and Boles, M. A. 2001. Thermodynamics: An Engineering Approach 4^th Ed. McGraw-Hill, Hightstown, NJ.

[16]

Chang, J., Meza, J., Ranganathan, P., Bash, C., and Shah, A. 2010. Green server design: Beyond operational energy to sustainability. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Power-Aware Computing and Systems (HotPower'10).

Digital Library

[17]

Chen, Y., Gmach, D., Hyser, C., Wang, Z., Bash, C., Hoover, C., and Singhal, S. 2010. Integrated management of application performance, power and cooling in data centers. In Proceedings of the 12^th IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS'10).

[18]

Chetty, M., Tran, D., and Grinter, R. 2008. Getting to green: Understanding resource consumption in the home. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp'08).

Digital Library

[19]

Corrigan, K., Shah, A., and Patel, C. 2010. Estimating environmental costs. In Proceedings of the 1^st USENIX Workshop on Sustainable Information Technology (SustainIT'10).

Digital Library

[20]

Delaney, K. and Smith, R. 2006. Surge in internet use, energy costs has big tech firms seeking power. The Wall St. J. Online, (6|13|06).

[21]

Dincer, I. and Rosen, M. 2007. Exergy: Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development. Elsevier, New York.

[22]

DOE. 2009. Annual energy outlook. Tech. rep. DOE/EIA-0383, Energy Information Administration, U.S. Department of Energy, Washington, DC.

[23]

Gellings, C. 1985. The concept of demand-side management for electric utilities. Proc. IEEE 73, 10.

[24]

Gmach, D., Rolia, J., Bash, C., Chen, Y., Christian, T., Shah, A., Sharma, R., and Wang, Z. 2010. Capacity planning and power management to exploit sustainable energy. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Network and Service Management (CNSM'10).

[25]

Hannemann, C. R., Carey, V. P., Shah, A. J., and Patel, C. D. 2010. Life-Cycle exergy consumption of an enterprise server. Int. J. Exergy 7, 4, 439--453.

[26]

Hao, M., Dayal, U., Keim, D. A., Morent, D., and Schneidewind, J. 2007a. Intelligent visual analytics queries. In Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Visual Analytics Science Technology. 91--98.

Digital Library

[27]

Hao, M., Dayal, U., Keim, D. A., and Schreck, T. 2007b. Multi-Resolution techniques for visual exploration of large time-series data. In Proceedings of the IEEE VGTC Symposium on Visualization (EuroVis'07).

Digital Library

[28]

Hao, M., Sharma, R., Dayal, U., Patel, C., and Keim, D. A. 2007c. Application of visual analytics for thermal state management in large data centers. In Proceedings of the Eurographics/IEEE-VGTC Symposium on Visualization. 1--8.

[29]

Hau, J. L. and Bakshi, B. 2004. Expanding exergy analysis to account for ecosystem products and services. Environ. Sci. Tech. 38, 13, 3768--3777.

[30]

Haseli, Y., Dincer, I., and Naterer, G. F. 2008. Unified approach to exergy efficiency, environmental impact and sustainable development for standard thermodynamic cycles. Int. J. Green Energy 5, 105--119.

[31]

Hastie, T., Tibshirani, R., and Friedman, J. 2009. The Elements of Statistical Learning: Data Mining, Inference, and Prediction 2^nd Ed. Springer, New York.

[32]

Hoover, C. 2011. A data-centric approach for integrated data center management. In Proceedings of the ASME/Pacific Rim Technical Conference and Exhibition on Packaging and Integration of Electronic and Photonic Systems (InterPACK'11).

[33]

HP. 2011. POD 240a (nicknamed HP EcoPOD). http://h17007.www1.hp.com/us/en/whatsnew/june/060611-3.aspx

[34]

Iyengar, M. and Schmidt, R. 2007. Analytical modeling of energy consumption and thermal performance of data center cooling systems- From the chip to the environment. In Proceedings of the ASME/Pacific Rim Technical Conference and Exhibition on Packaging and Integration of Electronic and Photonic Systems, MEMS and NEMS (InterPACK'07).

[35]

Jollife, I. 2002. Principal Component Analysis 2^nd Ed. Springer, New York.

[36]

Karidis, J., Moreira, J., and Moreno, J. 2009. True value: Assessing and optimizing the cost of computing at the data center level. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computing Frontiers.

Digital Library

[37]

Koomey, J., Brill, K., Turner, P., Stanley, J., and Taylor, B. 2008. A simple model for determining true total cost of ownership for data centers. Uptime Institute white paper.

[38]

Kumari, N., Shih, R., McReynolds, A., Sharma, S., Christian, T., and Bash, C. 2011. Optimization of outside air cooling in a data center. In Proceedings of the ASME/Pacific Rim Technical Conference and Exhibition on Packaging and Integration of Electronic and Photonic Systems (InterPACK'11).

[39]

Kusic, D., Kephart, J., Hanson, J., Kandasamy, N., and Jiang, G. 2009. Power and performance management of virtualized computing environments via lookahead control. Cluster Comput. 12, 1.

Digital Library

[40]

Lasseter, R. H. 2007. Microgrids and distributed generation. J. Energy Engin. 133, 3, 144--149.

[41]

Lin, J., Keogh, E., Lonardi, S., and Patel, P. 2002. Finding motifs in time series. In Proceedings of the 2^nd Workshop on Temporal Data Mining at the 8^th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining.

[42]

Marwah, M., Sharma, R., Patel, C., Shih, R., Bhatia, V., Mekanapurath, M., and Velayudhan, S. 2009a. Data analysis, visualization and knowledge discovery in sustainable data centers. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computing.

Digital Library

[43]

Marwah, M., Sharma, R., and Lugo, W. 2009b. Autonomous detection of thermal anomalies in data centers. In Proceedings of the ASME/Pacific Rim Technical Conference and Exhibition on Packaging and Integration of Electronic and Photonic Systems (InterPACK'09).

[44]

Marwah, M., Sharma, R., Ramakrishnan, N., Bash, C., and Patel, C. 2009c. Knowledge discovery and data mining for sustainable ecosystems. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Sustainable Systems and Technology (ISSST'09).

Digital Library

[45]

Marwah, M., Sharma, R., Lugo, W., and Bautista, L. 2010a. Anomalous thermal behavior detection in data centers using hierarchical pca. In Proceedings of the ACM SensorKDD in conjunction with KDD Conference.

[46]

Marwah, M., Sharma, R., and Bash, C. 2010b. Thermal anomaly prediction in data centers. In Proceedings of the 10^th Intersociety Conference on Thermal and Thermomechanical Phenomena in Electronic Systems (ITHERM'10).

[47]

Marwah, M., Arlitt, M., Hoover, C., Bash, C., and Sharma, R. 2010c. Exploratory analysis of aggregate power metrics in data centers. In Proceedings of the ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE'10).

[48]

Meisner, D., Gold, B., and Wenisch, T. 2009. Powernap: Eliminating server idle power. In Proceedings of the Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS'09).

Digital Library

[49]

Meza, j., Shih, R., Shah, A., Ranganathan, P., Chang, J., and Bash, C. 2010. Lifecycle-Based data center design. In Proceedings of the ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE'10).

[50]

Moran, M. J. 1982. Availability Analysis: A Guide to Efficient Energy Use. Prentice-Hall.

[51]

Patel, C. D., Bash, C. E., Belady, C., Stahl, L., and Sullivan, D. 2001. Computational fluid dynamics modeling of high compute density data centers to assure system inlet air specifications. In Proceedings of the ASME/Pacific Rim International Electronic Packaging Technical Conference and Exhibition (InterPACK'01).

[52]

Patel, C. D., Sharma, R. K., Bash, C. E., and Beitelmal, A. 2002. Thermal considerations in cooling large scale high computer density data centers. In Proceedings of the 8^th Intersociety Conference on Thermal and Thermomechanical Phenomena in Electronic Systems (ITHERM'02).

[53]

Patel, C. D., Sharma. R. K., Bash, C. E., and Graupner, S. 2003. Energy aware grid: Global workload placement based on energy efficiency. In Proceedings of the ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exhibition (IMECE'03).

[54]

Patel, C. and Shah, A. 2005. Cost model for planning, development and operation of a data center. Tech. rep. HPL-2005-107R1, HP Laboratories, Palo Alto, CA.

[55]

Patel, C. D., Bash, C. E., Sharma, R., Beitelmal, A., and Malone, C. G. 2005. Smart chip, system and data center enabled by advanced flexible cooling resources. In Proceedings of the IEEE Semiconductor Thermal Management and Measurement Symposium (SEMITHERM'05).

[56]

Patel, C. D., Sharma, R. K., Bash, C. E., and Beitelmal, M. 2006. Energy flow in the information technology stack: Introducing the coefficient of performance of the ensemble. In Proceedings of the ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE'06).

[57]

Patnaik, D., Marwah, M., Sharma, R. K., and Ramakrishnan, N. 2009. Sustainable operation and management of data center chillers using temporal data mining. In Proceedings of the 14^th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining.

Digital Library

[58]

Patnaik, D., Marwah, M., Sharma, R. K., and Ramakrishnan, N. 2010. Data mining for modeling chiller systems in data centers. In Proceedings of the 9^th International Symposium on Intelligent Data Analysis (IDA'10).

Digital Library

[59]

Rambo, J. and Joshi, Y. 2007. Modeling of data center airflow and heat transfer: State of the art and future trends. Distrib. Parallel Datab. 21, 2--3, 193--225.

Digital Library

[60]

Rao, S. and Parulekar, B. 2005. Energy Technology. Khanna Publishers.

[61]

Saad, M. 1997. Thermodynamics, Principles and Practice. Prentice-Hall.

[62]

Schmidt, R. 2001. Effect of data center characteristics on data processing equipment inlet temperatures. In Proceedings of the ASME/Pacific Rim International Electronic Packaging Technical Conference and Exhibition (InterPACK'01).

[63]

Schmidt, R., Cruz, E. E., and Iyengar, M. K. 2005. Challenges of data center thermal management. IBM J. Res. Devel. 49, 4--5, 709--723.

Digital Library

[64]

Sciubba, E. 2001. Beyond thermoeconomics&quest; The concept of extended exergy accounting and its application to the analysis and design of thermal systems. Exergy Int. J. 1, 2, 68--84.

[65]

Sciubba, E. 2005. Exergo-Economics: Thermodynamic foundation for a more rational resource use. Int. J. Energy Res. 29, 7, 613--636.

[66]

Shah, A., Carey, V., Patel, C., and Bash, C. 2008. Exergy analysis of data center thermal management systems. J. Heat Trans. 130, 2, Article 021401.

[67]

Shah, A. and Meckler, M. 2009. An exergy-based framework for assessing sustainability of it systems. In Proceedings of the 3^rd International ASME Energy Sustainability Conference.

[68]

Shah, A., Patel, C., and Carey, V. 2009. Exergy-Based metrics for sustainable design. In Proceedings of the 4^th International Exergy, Energy and Environmental Symposium (IEEES-4).

[69]

Shah, A. and Corrigan, K. 2010. Extending lifecycle exergy analysis beyond resource consumption. In Proceedings of the 4^th ASME International Conference on Energy Sustainability (ES'10).

[70]

Sharma, R., Bash, C. E., Marwah, M., Christian, T., and Patel, C. 2009a. Microgrids: A new approach to supply-side design of data centers. In Proceedings of the ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE'09).

[71]

Sharma, R., Marwah, M., and Lugo, W. 2009b. Application of data analytics to heat transfer phenomena for optimal design and operation of complex systems. In Proceedings of the ASME National Heat Transfer Conference (HT'09).

[72]

Sharma, R., Christian, T., Arlitt, M., Bash, C., and Patel, C. 2010. Design of farm waste-driven supply side infrastructure. In Proceedings of the 4^th ASME International Conference on Energy Sustainability.

[73]

Szargut, J., Morris, D. R., and Steward, F. R. 1988. Exergy Analysis of Thermal, Chemical and Metallurgical Processes. Hemisphere Publishing, New York.

[74]

VanGilder, J. W. and Shrivastava, S. K. 2007. Capture index: An airflow-based rack cooling performance metric. ASHRAE Trans. 113, 1, 126--136.

[75]

Wall, G. and Gong, M. 2001. On exergy and sustainable development- Part 2: Indicators and methods. Exergy Int. J. 1, 4, 217--233.

[76]

Walsh, E. J., Breen, T. J., Punch, J., Bash, C. E., and Shah, A. J. 2010. From chip to cooling tower data center modeling: Part II, influence of chip temperature control philosophy. In Proceedings of the 12^th Intersociety Conference on Thermo and Thermomech Phenomena in Electronic Systems (ITHERM'10).

[77]

Wang, Z., Chen, Y., Gmach, D., Singhal, S., Watson, B. J., Rivera, W., Zhu, X., and Hyser, C. D. 2009. AppRAISE: Application-Level performance management in virtualized server environments. IEEE Trans. Netw. Service Manag. 6, 4, 240--254.

Digital Library

[78]

Watson, B. J., Shah, A. J., Marwah, M., Bash, C. E., Sharma, R. K., Hoover, C. E., Christian, T., and Patel, C. 2009. Integrated design and management of a sustainable data center. In Proceedings of the ASME/Pacific Rim Technical Conference and Exhibition on Packaging and Integration of Electronic and Photonic Systems, MEMS, and NEMS (InterPACK'09).

[79]

Yong, L. and Wang, R. Z. 2007. Adsorption refrigeration: A survey of novel technologies. Recent Patents Engin. 1, 1--21.

[80]

Zhang, T. W. and Dornfeld, D. A. 2008. Quantifying the environmental impacts of labor. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Electronics and the Environment (ISEE'08).

Digital Library

[81]

Zhu, X., Young, D., Watson, B. J., Wang, Z., Rolia, J., Singhal, S., McKee, B., Hyser, C. D., Gmach, D., Gardner, R., Christian, T., and Cherkasova, L. 2008. 1000 islands: Integrated capacity and workload management for the next generation data center. In Proceedings of the 5^th IEEE International Conference on Autonomic Computing.

Digital Library

[82]

Zvolinschi, A., Kjelstrup, S., Bolland, O., and van der Kooi, H. J. 2007. Exergy sustainability indicators as a tool in industrial ecology. J. Industr. Ecol. 11, 4, 85--98.

Cited By

Liao ZKally JRu S(2024)Probabilistic modeling of renewable energy sources in smart grids: A stochastic optimization perspectiveSustainable Cities and Society10.1016/j.scs.2024.105522109(105522)Online publication date: Aug-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2024.105522
Mostafa NRamadan HElfarouk O(2022)Renewable energy management in smart grids by using big data analytics and machine learningMachine Learning with Applications10.1016/j.mlwa.2022.1003639(100363)Online publication date: Sep-2022
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mlwa.2022.100363
Li CHu YGu JYuan JLi T(2017)Oasis: Scaling Out Datacenter Sustainably and EconomicallyIEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems10.1109/TPDS.2016.261562528:7(1960-1973)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2017
https://doi.org/10.1109/TPDS.2016.2615625
Show More Cited By

Recommendations

Grow a Greener Data Center
Focus on Data Center: An IT consultant's essential guide for working in data center environment
Green Data Center Networks: Challenges and Opportunities
FIT '13: Proceedings of the 2013 11th International Conference on Frontiers of Information Technology

The concerns about environmental impacts, electricity cost, and energy needs of data centers are mounting. These concerns have given significant impetus to consider energy efficiency as one of the major data center design parameters for researchers and ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Journal on Emerging Technologies in Computing Systems

ACM Journal on Emerging Technologies in Computing Systems Volume 8, Issue 4

October 2012

212 pages

ISSN:1550-4832

EISSN:1550-4840

DOI:10.1145/2367736

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2012 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Journal Family

ACM Journals for the Design of Smart and Connected Systems

Publication History

Published: 30 November 2012

Accepted: 01 October 2011

Revised: 01 October 2011

Received: 01 June 2011

Published in JETC Volume 8, Issue 4

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Qualifiers

Research-article
Research
Refereed

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

8
Total Citations
View Citations
880
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)33
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)2

Reflects downloads up to 05 Mar 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Liao ZKally JRu S(2024)Probabilistic modeling of renewable energy sources in smart grids: A stochastic optimization perspectiveSustainable Cities and Society10.1016/j.scs.2024.105522109(105522)Online publication date: Aug-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2024.105522
Mostafa NRamadan HElfarouk O(2022)Renewable energy management in smart grids by using big data analytics and machine learningMachine Learning with Applications10.1016/j.mlwa.2022.1003639(100363)Online publication date: Sep-2022
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mlwa.2022.100363
Li CHu YGu JYuan JLi T(2017)Oasis: Scaling Out Datacenter Sustainably and EconomicallyIEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems10.1109/TPDS.2016.261562528:7(1960-1973)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2017
https://doi.org/10.1109/TPDS.2016.2615625
Li CWang RQian DLi T(2016)Managing Server Clusters on Renewable Energy MixACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems10.1145/284508511:1(1-24)Online publication date: 21-Feb-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2845085
Li CHu YLiu LGu JSong MLiang XYuan JLi T(2015)Towards sustainable in-situ server systems in the big data eraACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News10.1145/2872887.275038143:3S(14-26)Online publication date: 13-Jun-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2872887.2750381
Hua YLi CTang WJiang LLiang XBhuyan LChong FSarkar V(2015)Building Fuel Powered Supercomputing Data Center at Low CostProceedings of the 29th ACM on International Conference on Supercomputing10.1145/2751205.2751215(241-250)Online publication date: 8-Jun-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2751205.2751215
Li CHu YLiu LGu JSong MLiang XYuan JLi TMarr DAlbonesi D(2015)Towards sustainable in-situ server systems in the big data eraProceedings of the 42nd Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture10.1145/2749469.2750381(14-26)Online publication date: 13-Jun-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2749469.2750381
Ham SKim MChoi BJeong J(2015)Simplified server model to simulate data center cooling energy consumptionEnergy and Buildings10.1016/j.enbuild.2014.10.05886(328-339)Online publication date: Jan-2015
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2014.10.058

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Article

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Figures

Tables

Media

View Issue’s Table of Contents