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HP helps data centres play it cool

Stephen Shankland CNET News.com

Published: 04 May 2006 10:25 BST

Hewlett-Packard has begun testing technology that the company says cuts power consumption of data centre air conditioning by 60 percent as companies face growing energy bills.

The technology uses a network of sensors -- 900 of them in a 185 square metre data centre in Palo Alto, California. The sensors feed data to a control system that governs air flow and temperature settings of air conditioning units.

Instead of running air conditioning at full speed and the standard 21 degrees Celsius, the units might be set so blowers run slower and produce 25-degree air when possible, said Chandrakant Patel, a technologist at HP Labs. He called the technology the "dynamic smart-cooling controller".

Patel argues there's plenty of room for improvement in the brute force methods that prevail today in data centre cooling. "The state of the art is lacking," he said.

Data centre operators are struggling with burgeoning energy demands as servers are packed more densely and consume more electricity. Performance per watt has become a mantra at Intel and other companies whose products are now in the hot seat, while Advanced Micro Devices and Sun Microsystems trumpet their products' relative energy efficiency.

Customer trends spotlight the growing power problem, said IDC analyst John Humphries, who said his firm's customer surveys show:

Servers that consumed an average 100 watts of power 10 years ago now consume 400 watts.

Of the money spent to operate data centres, 15 to 20 percent goes on power and cooling.

Each rack of computer gear 10 years ago held an average seven servers, but now holds 20 to 22.

Electricity distribution systems 10 years ago were designed to deliver 5 to 8 kilowatts, but new data centres are designed for 20 kilowatts and up.

Ten years ago there were about six million servers worldwide. Now there are 24m, and IDC projects that number will be 35m in 2010.

HP is building its sensor technology into a new 3,250 square metre data centre in Bangalore, India, and is looking at other internal sites, Patel said.

Key to the technology is preventing hot spots that cause server failure; data centre operators aren't willing to accept higher risk with a more flexible cooling system.