From: Dorian Muthig [mailto:***]
Sent: Thursday, September 03, 2009 2:27 AM
To: MacKinnon, Heather
Subject: RE: Data Center Efficiency Challenge Registration: [Small Business], [Dorian Muthig]

 

Hello,

 

I cannot make an accurate statement, because the actual efficiency of the system complex depends heavily on the usage scenario. However the devices should be able to handle most scenarios at a greater cost and power efficiency than a lot of systems in use today.

One of the storage units should roughly have a maximum power draw of 600 watts. 24 hard drives (10.7W at peak each) + ~300W for the other electronics.

The virtualization units should draw a maximum of ~800 watts, each. That totals to about 7600 watts. Given the cooling and the network switch also draws power, it is safe to say that the rack draws around 8000 watts at a power supply efficiency of 87-90%.

Given that most power supplies, only have an efficiency of 67-79%, the system is highly power efficient.

The next thing is the use of virtual machines, rather than using real ones. The use of a virtual machine over a real one has the advantage of sharing unused resources of the host machine and a higher workload for the host. Whilst higher workload means a higher current draw from the power outlet, there are two ways to save:

1. Savings in hardware costs and space requirements.

2. Savings in power overhead through the use of a single instead of multiple power supplies. This reduces the lost energy through power conversion greatly.

3. Savings in power draw through sharing devices that are otherwise mostly unused by the system but need to be constantly supplied with power.

 

Also, the usage of liquid cooling allows a closer placement of racks in the data center. This means more racks could fit into a larger datacenter. This is space efficient.

 

To sum it up: The system could allow 384 redundant virtual machines, each with 512MB of RAM and 640GB of storage space (they would make great web servers or servers for video broadcasting, for example). Those systems might as well draw up to 700 watts from the power outlet, each.

384 * 700W = 268800W

Compared to the low value of 8000W the new system would use about 3% of the power the old systems would have used. Even less if some storage units are turned off, because there is currently no demand.

 

The hardware costs should be lower as well, but if they aren’t the power savings should justify a slight price increase. I don’t have access to commercial pricing quotes.

 

Best regards,

Dorian Muthig

http://www.dorianmuthig.com/

 

From: MacKinnon, Heather [mailto:***]
Sent: Thursday, September 03, 2009 1:27 AM
To: Dorian Muthig
Subject: RE: Data Center Efficiency Challenge Registration: [Small Business], [Dorian Muthig]

 

Hi Dorian,

 

In reviewing your submission, the judges were wondering if you could please quantify the power and cost savings of your proposal and provide an explanation for how you arrived at those numbers. Pending your response, we hope to finalize our selections and notify the winners next week. Thanks, let me know if you have any questions.

 

Best,

Heather

 

Heather MacKinnon

Associate

Burson-Marsteller, Technology

Office: ***

Twitter: @heatherkmack, @bmgreentech

 

 

 

From: MacKinnon, Heather
Sent: Wednesday, July 29, 2009 10:20 AM
To: Dorian Muthig
Subject: RE: Data Center Efficiency Challenge Registration: [Small Business], [Dorian Muthig]

 

Hi Dorian –

 

Thank you very much for your submission. This is your official receipt of acceptance. We should be notifying the winners in early to mid September. Please let us know if you have any questions.

 

Best,

Heather

 

Heather MacKinnon

Associate

Burson-Marsteller, Technology

Office: ***

 

 

From: Dorian Muthig [mailto:***]
Sent: Wednesday, July 29, 2009 9:44 AM
To: BM Intel Data Center Challenge [mailto:inteldatacenterchallenge@bm.com]
Subject: Data Center Efficiency Challenge Registration: [Small Business], [Dorian Muthig]

 

Hello,

 

This is a written proposal for the efficient use of a 45U rack in a small business datacenter with a standard room height of 2.30m to 2.35m.

This design consists of custom built units, that do not outline the use of vertical space or the type of rack equipment used. Any 45U or higher rack will suffice.

All units must use 80+ Gold certified power supplies to achieve maximum usage of drawn current. The units will use liquid cooling combined with silent air cooling for the components where water blocks cannot be attached. The liquid coolant will be either thermoelectrically cooled in dry room environments or employ radiated active cooling to enable most efficient use of volatile storage performance, which may degrade greatly through loud noises or vibration.

The rack will be filled with a 1U 10GBit network switch at the top, two 1U virtualization units, 10 storage units and a cooling unit at the bottom. Components outlined as follows:

 

High performance virtualization units (each):

1x 1U server chassis with two 2.5” hot-swap SATA drive bays

1x Intel® Server Board S5520UR

2x Intel® Xeon W5580

12x 8GB DDR3-1333 ECC registered memory module

2x Intel® X25-E Extreme 32GB SATA Solid-State Drive

1x Intel® 10 Gigabit XF SR Dual Port

 

Will run a version of Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V or VMWare Virtual Server to enable the use of scalable, power efficient virtual servers to provide services to the end user. The SSDs will run in RAID1 to provide redundancy and serve as storage for the host operating system, and error dump files. Each virtualization unit will enable the use of up to 192 virtual servers running Windows Server 2008 Server Core or a Linux operating system. This can save the power costs of up to 370 hardware units that would need to be used otherwise.

 

Storage units (each):

1x 4U 24 hot-swap SATA drive bay rackmount chassis

1x Intel® Server Board S5500WB

3x 1GB DDR3-800 ECC registered memory module

1x Intel® RAID Controller SRCSASJV

24x 2TB 7200RPM SATA hard drive

1x Intel® 10 Gigabit XF SR

 

Will run a version of Windows Storage Server 2008 or any other type of iSCSI target enabled operating system to provide large amounts of storage to the end user for RESTful resources or the virtualization units in the same rack. The drives will be combined to RAID6 arrays which will be striped with RAID0 to build a large RAID60 storage array. Optionally the iSCSI targets will be assigned in partial blocks of their total storage, which will be striped again. The remaining storage on a storage unit will then be used to provide the end user with RESTful services. Those services aren’t very hardware demanding and can be run on the storage units to increase efficiency.

The storage units will use low power mainboard and CPU components as well as the amount of memory which provides the best power to performance ratio. A storage unit will not be demanding in CPU power and this will enable the low power CPU to turn off additional cores and further lower the clock speed using Enhanced Intel® Speed Step technology to keep the power draw for those units at a minimum to allow the power supplies to work efficiently. Storage units can be turned off when they are not needed and turned on, when the storage demand increases.

 

With up to 384 virtual servers (512MB RAM, demand switched CPU clock cycles, and an average storage of 640GB) one single rack can replace a small datacenter, greatly reduce power costs and the costs for sound proofing in urban areas. The power draw for a single rack can be projected to range between 5000 and 10000 watts, when all units are powered on and on average to full workload. Additionally to saving power the equipment costs may be reduced as well, which means again less harm for the environment with contaminates. It is recommended to run two racks combined for additional redundancy and the system is highly scalable to be suited for enterprise usage as well.

 

Participant name: Dorian Muthig

Organization: None

Title of submission: A 45U high efficiency scalable datacenter in a rack approach

The unique Facebook/YouTube URL of your submission (if applicable): not applicable

E-mail address: ***

City/state: Estenfeld, BAVARIA, Germany

Date of birth: March 13th 1989

 

Best regards,

Dorian Muthig

http://www.dorianmuthig.com/

 

 

 

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