

Google: We Like Our Data Centers Hot - 1SockChuck
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/10/14/google-raise-your-data-center-temperature/

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mdasen
Not to distrust Intel's study on temperature, but it makes a lot more sense
for Microsoft and Google to raise their temperatures than smaller operations
(like my company). We have a small server room (3 racks, mostly full), but we
don't have seamless failover and often we're without hot spares. So, it
matters that servers stay up.

With Google, it's not that big a deal. They expect failure and so it simply
becomes a calculation of what's worth more, the electricity or the hardware
and I'm guessing the electricity would win out in that situation. However, for
us it's the hardware and the downtime and the hassle of setting up a box to
support some ancient system some of which, no joke, date back to DOS days (or
maybe I'm just really young and think that's old). Suffice it to say, it isn't
seamless and it isn't even as easy as installing and configing a LAMP server.

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olefoo
I have been there and done that. One thing you should at least consider is
seeing if you can get some of your more creaky servers to run in a VM, you can
run DOS in virtualbox and probably xen as well, you might be able to replace a
number of physical machines with a single virtualisation box ( a pair if you
are serious about availability ).

Going this route should save you energy and space. If you can replace a rack
full of machinery with 1U of server and 2U of disk shelf, you are way ahead of
the game.

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alecco
Last time visiting USA I was as usual turning off all the lights of the room I
didn't need. After a few days I noticed a 747 could land with just the
lighting of the long hallway. The hotel was mostly empty. I felt so stupid.

There is a need for USA business to revise their attitude on energy.

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Prrometheus
Fun fact: data centers account for 1.2% of American electricity usage. Finding
more energy efficient data center architectures is a big deal that a lot of
resources are devoted to. Even a small improvement can result in large energy
and money savings.

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showerst
Can you give a citation for that?

Really interesting if true, thanks for sharing.

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Prrometheus
There's a few professors here at UCSD that are interested in low-power
computing and data center architecture. The statistic was sited in a talk by
Prof. Tajana Rosing that I attended earlier this week.

There's one guy here that is working on ways to integrate flash with the
system memory; he thinks he can reduce power usage by something like 40% in a
data center setting.

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listic
Moreover, this could result in a revolution in computing. If only we could
have memory fast as RAM and non-volatile as Flash, everyone would use it and
it would simplyfy computing a lot.

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Prrometheus
Well, flash in its current form is better at certain tasks than either hard
disks or RAM. Hard disks are big, cheap, and slow. RAM is expensive, power
hungry, and fast. If I remember correctly, flash is faster than a hard disk,
more energy efficient than either, and way cheaper than RAM. I'm not sure of
the implementation details, but you could apparently make a system better on
all three axes of performance, cost, and energy usage by mixing in flash.

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iigs
I was bantering back and forth with a couple friends recently about what our
dream datacenter/colo space would look like. We estimated with devices with
good airflow you could stay within the operating temperature range of most
computer components with the outdoor air temperature in North Dakota (at least
on the high side... you'd have to close the vent window in the winter). It
would be wild to operate a datacenter with no active cooling at all.

The sooner the days of wearing gloves in the datacenter are over the better,
in my opinion. Bring the steel toed flip flops and cargo shorts. :)

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khafra
Microsoft's considering opening a data center in Siberia, but the other side
of the equation is the local electricity costs. If the juice to run the
computers in Outer Freezistan costs more than computers + AC in San Francisco,
you save no money. Unless you're building a floating data center with built-in
hydroelectric and solar thermal or something.

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ChaitanyaSai
Building below the frost line apparently results in a steady 55F temperature.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_living>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dugout_>(shelter)#American_Northwest

So maybe all you need to do is burrow in and house your servers in a covered
clay pit in the basement?

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thetable
Now they just need to raise the temperature on their shuttles. It's so
freezing cold, I got sick after the second day of work last summer.

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cstejerean
It's always better to keep the temperature on the low end. People that are
cold can wear extra layers. About the only choice when the temperature is too
high is to start taking your clothes off and depending on the setting those
around you might not appreciate it.

