EMC Center Delivers Energy Efficiency
Revamped Westborough site saved company $3 million
Computer data centers are power hogs and the ones at computer storage giant EMC Corp. are no exception.
As the company began looking for ways to make them more efficient, it focused on the 19,500-square-foot data center in its Westborough building. When it was done, the extreme makeover saved the company more than $3 million in capital and operation expenses over three years. Energy use was reduced, space was freed up and the cooling systems were made more efficient.
After all, data centers are the heart of a corporation's infrastructure, with rows and rows of servers that handle documents, many kinds of software applications including e-mail, the computer network structure, Web sites and e-commerce.
Two Rights Make A Right
The revamped data center is a convergence of two mandates: pressure to depress energy costs and to reduce its carbon footprint.
"It was a case of it being the right thing to do for the company and the right thing to do as a good corporate citizen," said Ken Goodrow, EMC's data center services manager.
EMC's first big step was to have an independent company, American Power Conversion, conduct an air flow study of the data center. It showed a lot that wasn't visible to the naked eye. The data center team and EMC's consulting services division also conducted a thermal imaging analysis, a facility infrastructure review and an analysis of the existing servers and computer storage devices.
Among other things, the air flow analysis showed hot air created by close to 200 servers and associated data storage devices was rising to the top, then drifting back down and mixing with the cold air. Some air conditioning units labored overtime while others weren't working hard enough, making it difficult to keep the ambient air temperature at the optimum temperature: between 69 and 73 degrees Fahrenheit.
The Westborough data center was averaging 75.9 degrees, so with the analysis in hand the teams set about making changes. Spaces above the ceiling were added to more effectively channel warm air back into the air conditioning units and more floor grates were installed at strategic locations so the air conditioning would be more effective.
The changes worked. The data center's average temperature dropped to an average of 72.5, a four-degree decrease that put it comfortably in the optimum range. The cable cutouts cut in the floor under each rack of servers were also leaking cold air out of the room, and were plugged with special "pillows" to prevent leaks.
Another big savings was realized by using virtualization technology from VMware, a subsidiary of EMC, to reduce its physical servers, which use a lot power and create a lot of heat. It virtualized 173 servers and installed 18 newer physical servers, eliminating 165 physical servers.
Virtual servers are created through software, enabling many virtual servers to reside on one physical server. EMC bought VMware Inc. in 2004.
Lessons Learned
Eliminating that many power-guzzling, heat-producing servers also freed up more room in the data center, which was an important aspect of the project for Goodrow.
EMC, based in Hopkinton, has five other data centers which are smaller than the one in Westborough, and will use the lessons it learned elsewhere in the company, including plans to build virtual server farms to keep costs down.
Of course keeping energy costs down is nothing new to most corporations, including EMC, according to Paul Fitzgerald, EMC's senior director of North American facilities.
As Fitzgerald manages the physical plants inside and out as efficiently as possible, increasing pressures on all companies to be more environmentally responsible are helpful to his arguments for certain improvements.
"That pressure is another tool in my toolbox to justify why we should spend the time, effort and money on projects like the data center," he said.
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