REESHMA
Cold storage - an Arctic solution to the data storage cooling problem
All the data we generate-when we shop or when we use our bank accounts or our phones — our salaries are logged in our employers’ data systems, as are our tax records. Social networking adds to the data, as do online photo storage and other internet-based activities has to be stored and this is giving rise to a new form of building, characteristic to the early 21st century: the data centre. Sharing some of the form and characteristics of ages-old strongrooms and more modern hardened bunkers, these are the locations that keep the numbers vital to our lifestyles, and the fortunes of government and industry, safe. But this has also generated a set of problems for civil engineers. The most vital thing that a data centre has to do is to keep its ranks of computer servers running. For that, they need two things: power and cooling.
The two are connected: it’s the power consumption of the chips in the computers that leads to them generating heat, which has to be removed to keep the servers operating; and as computers get faster, their chips consume more energy and produce more heat. Both energy consumption and heat are of concern. Consulting firm McKinsey has predicted that data centres could outstrip airlines as CO2 emitters as early as 2020 and, with all energy consumers now under pressure to do their bit in the carbon emissions crusade, data centre operators are looking for ways to cut power requirements. For computer manufacturers, this means exploring low-energy data storage systems. For data centre designers and operators, this means finding ways to cut the bills for the air conditioning and refrigeration they need to keep their data chilly.
One way of doing this that has generated headlines recently is to build your data centre somewhere cold, and that’s the solution social networking giant Facebook has opted for. The company has announced that it is building its first data centre outside the US at Lulea in northern Sweden, 60 miles south of the Arctic Circle. Serving customers in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, the centre will use two resources that Lulea has in abundance — cold air and hydroelectric energy. The site’s servers will use some 120MW of electricity, which will be derived from the hydropower schemes along the Lule Älv River. The facility will be connected to several substations and this multiple redundancy allows it to reduce the need for diesel-powered back-up generators by 70 per cent, although it will still have 40MW of back-up generation capacity.Sub-zero temperatures for much of the year will allow the centre to use air cooling for 97 per cent of the year to keep the servers cold, while the particular design of Facebook’s servers, which are taller than average, allows the company to use larger fans, running more slowly, to circulate the cold air, reducing power consumption by 10 per cent compared with conventional systems.
Facebook isn’t the first internet giant to turn to the frozen North for free cooling. In 2009, Google bought a paper mill in Finland, at Hamina, north east of Helsinki, and converted it into a data centre. Seawater from the gulf is pumped into the centre through a tunnel in the granite bedrock that was originally built for the paper mill, run through heat exchangers to remove the heat from the servers and mixed with more seawater to reduce its temperature before being returned to the gulf. That ensures that it’s closer in temperature to the inlet water, which minimises the impact on the environment.
Cold storage - an Arctic solution to the data storage cooling problem
All the data we generate-when we shop or when we use our bank accounts or our phones — our salaries are logged in our employers’ data systems, as are our tax records. Social networking adds to the data, as do online photo storage and other internet-based activities has to be stored and this is giving rise to a new form of building, characteristic to the early 21st century: the data centre. Sharing some of the form and characteristics of ages-old strongrooms and more modern hardened bunkers, these are the locations that keep the numbers vital to our lifestyles, and the fortunes of government and industry, safe. But this has also generated a set of problems for civil engineers. The most vital thing that a data centre has to do is to keep its ranks of computer servers running. For that, they need two things: power and cooling.
The two are connected: it’s the power consumption of the chips in the computers that leads to them generating heat, which has to be removed to keep the servers operating; and as computers get faster, their chips consume more energy and produce more heat. Both energy consumption and heat are of concern. Consulting firm McKinsey has predicted that data centres could outstrip airlines as CO2 emitters as early as 2020 and, with all energy consumers now under pressure to do their bit in the carbon emissions crusade, data centre operators are looking for ways to cut power requirements. For computer manufacturers, this means exploring low-energy data storage systems. For data centre designers and operators, this means finding ways to cut the bills for the air conditioning and refrigeration they need to keep their data chilly.
One way of doing this that has generated headlines recently is to build your data centre somewhere cold, and that’s the solution social networking giant Facebook has opted for. The company has announced that it is building its first data centre outside the US at Lulea in northern Sweden, 60 miles south of the Arctic Circle. Serving customers in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, the centre will use two resources that Lulea has in abundance — cold air and hydroelectric energy. The site’s servers will use some 120MW of electricity, which will be derived from the hydropower schemes along the Lule Älv River. The facility will be connected to several substations and this multiple redundancy allows it to reduce the need for diesel-powered back-up generators by 70 per cent, although it will still have 40MW of back-up generation capacity.Sub-zero temperatures for much of the year will allow the centre to use air cooling for 97 per cent of the year to keep the servers cold, while the particular design of Facebook’s servers, which are taller than average, allows the company to use larger fans, running more slowly, to circulate the cold air, reducing power consumption by 10 per cent compared with conventional systems.
Facebook isn’t the first internet giant to turn to the frozen North for free cooling. In 2009, Google bought a paper mill in Finland, at Hamina, north east of Helsinki, and converted it into a data centre. Seawater from the gulf is pumped into the centre through a tunnel in the granite bedrock that was originally built for the paper mill, run through heat exchangers to remove the heat from the servers and mixed with more seawater to reduce its temperature before being returned to the gulf. That ensures that it’s closer in temperature to the inlet water, which minimises the impact on the environment.
Data
centre design issues mainly concern the efficient placement of server
units, to ensure that power and cooling can be accessed easily,
Sadoskierski said. ’Once upon a time, you’d just put a load of computers
in a room, turn on the air conditioning, mix the air up and remove the
heat that way,’ he explained. ’That worked reasonably well but, when the
heat loads went up, you might have one computer blowing hot air into
the inlet of another one, and that’s no good. That’s when we started
stacking the servers in cabinets and arranging those in aisles, front to
front and back to back, and supplying cold air in the aisles where it
was needed. That makes things more efficient.’In the last few years,
data centres have been partitioned to wall off the hot aisles and cool
those specifically in a closed loop. ’That stops the heat from getting
out altogether and allows you to have higher loads,’ Sadoskierski said.
One
interesting question about data centres is whether they are a temporary
problem — whether the ever-increasing power usage and heat output of
computer servers is a trend that’s going to continue. Sadorskieski
agrees. ’I think that, eventually, there will be a change in computer
technology, with chips that produce less heat; it’s certainly something
that the IT companies are working towards,’ he said. ’But in the
short-to-medium term, we’re still going to have these systems and heat
management will continue to be an issue.’
ATHIRA
VULTURE- UNMANNED AIRCRAFT
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of United States is working to develop an unmanned aircraft that is able to stay in air for a period of 5 years at a time. It is one of the most recent inventions of world.
Officials of DARPA has revealed that this aircraft will be known as VULTURE due to itsPersistent Pseudo-Satellite Capability . It means that this aircraft will be able to fly over a single area, communicating or performing analysis for years at a time.
Major Obstacles in Project:
Even this project looks appealing to many of you, but there are some serious problems or you can say obstacles in achieving this project.
1) First challenge in front of designers is to figure out some Way to Supply Power to this aircraft during long missions.
2) Another problem is that this aircraft will carry a 1000 pound (450 kg) payload in winds at an altitude of 60,000 to 90,000 feet.
3) Designers have also to sort out the problems regarding Deterioration of Materialsduring their long-time exposure to stratospheric flight.
In addition to this there may be many challenges during designing of this aircraft.
Daniel Newman: The Man Behind VULTURE
Daniel Newman is the Project Manger of this ambitious project of NASA. In his words: "We want to completely change the paradigm of how we think of aircraft. Aviation has a perfect record - we've never left one up there. We will attempt to break that record". It looks that its time to get out of the traditional "launch - recover - maintain - launch cycle of aircrafts."
Concept Behind Vulture:
Basically Aircrafts operates just like satellites, but the major difference is that these are not regulated by orbital mechanics. You can understand Vulture as a Pseudo-Satellite, which operates in the stratosphere and not in the low Earth orbit. This would provide a 65 dB upgrading in communications capability and will increase onboard sensor resolution.
When Will it Become a Reality?
Well, right now NASA has not mentioned any time table when the aircraft will be ready. But for now NASA has worked on the probable design of Vulture (see picture).
http://www.squidoo.com/latestinventions
ATHIRA
VULTURE- UNMANNED AIRCRAFT
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of United States is working to develop an unmanned aircraft that is able to stay in air for a period of 5 years at a time. It is one of the most recent inventions of world.
Officials of DARPA has revealed that this aircraft will be known as VULTURE due to itsPersistent Pseudo-Satellite Capability . It means that this aircraft will be able to fly over a single area, communicating or performing analysis for years at a time.
Major Obstacles in Project:
Even this project looks appealing to many of you, but there are some serious problems or you can say obstacles in achieving this project.
1) First challenge in front of designers is to figure out some Way to Supply Power to this aircraft during long missions.
2) Another problem is that this aircraft will carry a 1000 pound (450 kg) payload in winds at an altitude of 60,000 to 90,000 feet.
3) Designers have also to sort out the problems regarding Deterioration of Materialsduring their long-time exposure to stratospheric flight.
In addition to this there may be many challenges during designing of this aircraft.
Daniel Newman: The Man Behind VULTURE
Daniel Newman is the Project Manger of this ambitious project of NASA. In his words: "We want to completely change the paradigm of how we think of aircraft. Aviation has a perfect record - we've never left one up there. We will attempt to break that record". It looks that its time to get out of the traditional "launch - recover - maintain - launch cycle of aircrafts."
Concept Behind Vulture:
Basically Aircrafts operates just like satellites, but the major difference is that these are not regulated by orbital mechanics. You can understand Vulture as a Pseudo-Satellite, which operates in the stratosphere and not in the low Earth orbit. This would provide a 65 dB upgrading in communications capability and will increase onboard sensor resolution.
When Will it Become a Reality?
Well, right now NASA has not mentioned any time table when the aircraft will be ready. But for now NASA has worked on the probable design of Vulture (see picture).
http://www.squidoo.com/latestinventions
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