APC Shevigang: Green data center needs to start with planning

With the contradiction between economic development and energy crisis becoming more and more obvious, the requirement of energy-saving for IT infrastructure is more and more high. Data centers have always been large consumers of energy, so how to build a green data center, has become the focus of attention in the industry today. Today, we specially invited the Schneider Electric IT division Greater China Strategic Marketing director Shevigang to share the experience and suggestions of the Green data center, and to answer the relevant questions of the Green data center.

Q1: How do you think and understand the development trend of "green energy saving" in the data center, do you consider it a concept hype or a general trend?

A: With the country for energy conservation and emission reduction work and the high priority of the green economy, "environmental protection", "green" topic has gradually become a hot topic in the field of data center. In the current environment, green economy and energy-saving emission reduction represent the contribution of enterprises and individuals to the development of society. For customers in the data center, the growing business is facing an increase in IT systems in the operation of the data center that will increase greenhouse gas emissions, occupy large amounts of land and human resources, and increase the cost of power consumption and cooling, and the data center becomes the most critical engine for business, It is the most imminent problem for the managers of data center to make full use of the data center's wind and water power to improve the productivity of the data center.

Energy efficiency represents the greenest part of the data center, and in China, the country's incentives for contract energy management projects and the positive response of customers in the Data center field are also visible in the Green data center. Therefore, we believe that a green energy-saving data center is bound to be the future trend.

Q2: What stage do you think Chinese users are currently aware of the concept of "green data center"?

A: In China, with the increasing emphasis on energy saving and emission reduction, as well as the challenges faced by enterprises ' it operation Management, the construction of Green data Center has been recognized and valued by more and more customers.

The best logic for building a green data center, and the cheapest green way, is to take into account the basic requirements of green from the beginning of the data center, and to do more with energy efficiency analysis, tradeoff, calculation and laying in the early stages of the data center. At present, some data center managers will think upfront to reduce costs, will choose cheaper equipment, while purchasing more redundant equipment to meet the data center's future business growth requirements. But in fact, in the entire lifecycle phase of the data center, in addition to including upfront acquisition costs, while energy cost increases lead to a significant increase in data center operating costs. Therefore, in the planning phase of the data center, the basic requirements of "green" are considered as the necessary measures to ensure the high availability of data centers, improve the flexibility of later operations and reduce their overall costs.

Q3: What problems and bottlenecks do you think the "Green data Center" is currently facing?

A: As mentioned earlier, some customers are unaware of the importance of early planning stages in building a green datacenter. As the world's leading provider of key power and refrigeration services, Schneider Electric IT department can provide innovative energy efficiency management products and solutions for all types of enterprises and users, help enterprises optimize room space management, form a one-stop solution from consulting, planning, design to deployment and service, build green and efficient scalable data center To ensure the continuous operation of business and achieve energy saving up to 30%.

Q4: Can you introduce an APC solution for the Green data center?

A: Schneider Electric It division is the world's leading provider of key power and refrigeration services, we take the customer demand as the guidance, and relies on the Schneider Electric power Strong, the abundant resources, provides the customer from the planning, the design, the deployment, to the service, the industry most comprehensive covers the power supply, the refrigeration and the management, unifies the hardware, The overall solution for software and services, to properly plan and fully meet the needs of key data protection and mission-critical applications from SMEs, to healthcare, finance, telecommunications, insurance and other industries.

In the face of the different needs of customers, whether the product level, management level, or analysis of the advisory level, Schneider Electric IT division can provide customers with dedicated to the data center of energy-saving green services. To protect customers in a certain period of time, a certain amount of investment costs, improve the productivity of the data center, increase its high availability, the realization of green environmental protection room.

Q5:ups Green Energy-saving is an important part of building a green data center, can you introduce what UPS green energy-saving technologies are currently available? In the green energy-saving perspective, what is your best bet on the UPS?

A: APC has an innovative modular ups, and modular data centers can more easily meet user needs, improve data center effectiveness, reduce it capital investment and operational costs, and achieve high availability of green energy efficiency.

APC Symmetra PX 250/500kw is a global, redundant, scalable, and highly efficient power protection system designed to achieve cost-effectiveness while providing high levels of availability Symmetra PX 250/500kw can be seamlessly integrated into the design of today's state-of-the-art data centers , is a real modular system. The system consists of a dedicated, redundant, hot-swappable modules-Power modules, intelligent modules, battery modules, and roadsides-all modules are designed in accordance with the principle of easy and efficient maintenance, and the system can extend power and uptime when demand increases or requires higher levels of availability.

As the core power system of the APC Infrastruxure system, the Symmetra PX series is suitable for small, medium and large data centers that are efficiently managed. Symmetra PX 250/500kw is a standardized module with self-diagnosis function, which can reduce the risk of human error and improve the overall reliability of the data center.

Q6: The energy consumption of the data center is one of the main energy expenditure of the data center, can you introduce the green energy-saving technology and method in the data center refrigeration?

A: APC has an innovative Inrow architecture to help businesses achieve more efficient and targeted refrigeration by shortening the distance between refrigeration equipment and hot spots. Its close proximity to the heating source, for medium, high and ultra-high density cabinets to provide predictable dynamic air conditioning capacity. APC's Inrow RP has two designs based on chilled water and refrigerant, which are suitable for a variety of application environments. This architecture reduces the need for continuously running high-speed fans used in traditional ways, saving energy consumption while maximizing power to it devices.

APC announced in September 2010 the launch of two new refrigeration products Inrow? OA and Refrigerant allocation unit (RDU). APC Inrow OA can provide energy-saving and efficiency-efficient ceiling pump refrigeration scheme for data Center environment, and further expand APC's leading line-level refrigeration product series.

The new APC Inrow OA is ideal for medium-and high-density server rooms and data centers, the ability to capture hot air from the source up to 27kW of IT equipment and neutralize it, and to distribute it space to cover the entire environment, thus fundamentally addressing the hot issues of virtualization and high-density applications. At the same time, Inrow OA contains an integrated heat containment system to avoid mixing hot and cold airflow, thus improving the predictability of refrigeration effects. Modular design, variable speed fan and active response control are integrated into this high-performance system. The ceiling design eliminates the need for any additional room floor space, as it can be mounted on top of the cabinet or fixed on the ceiling above the hot channel, helping to improve the flexibility and adaptability of the existing data center environment. The main advantages of the new APC Inrow OA include:

• Maximize available ground space for IT equipment

• Solution to leakage potential in data center

• Efficiency improvement compared with traditional elevated floor data center refrigeration scheme 30–50%

• Eliminate hotspots due to high-density deployments

• Increased flexibility in the deployment and adjustment of refrigeration schemes

• Ease of installation, minimizing initial input costs

Q7: Can you give a brief introduction to the Infrastruxure Integrated system? What does it mean for a green datacenter?

A: The APC infrastruxure solution has won multiple awards and patents, in a variety of IT environments, not only to improve it performance, enhance availability and speed deployment, but also reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) of the entire IT environment. The APC infrastruxure system is made up of standardized, modular components, not only to help the enterprise tailor to meet today's needs, but also to easily upgrade to solve tomorrow's use.

The Revolutionary enterprise architecture is to solve the serious challenges facing the enterprise through the future solutions: the "4C" concept advocated by APC infrastruxure High efficiency enterprise--reasonably-planned high-quality components, close proximity to heat source refrigeration, hot air containment, and capacity management enable enterprises to minimize waste, and can maximize the scalability of the system.

December 2010, APC released a new generation of infrastruxure integrated system, as a high-performance, scalable and adaptable data center architecture, can effectively reduce the concept, design to install the implementation cycle and significantly reduce its complexity. Infrastruxure fully integrates modular power supply, refrigeration, rack, safety and management, and is part of Schneider Electric's comprehensive ecostruxure energy efficiency management architecture. For a green data center, it optimizes power supply, refrigeration and footprint in an integrated energy efficiency management system in a modular manner to meet customer demand for current and future business growth. The new generation of infrastruxure integrated system can achieve 25% of the power supply and refrigeration capacity of the upgrade, while footprint reduction of 15%, and achieve 15% of the cost savings.

Infrastruxure Integrated System new features include:

Symmetra PX 96kW, 250kW, 500kW: Dual-transform, efficient uninterruptible power supply (UPS) with internal modular design, can be easily extended and reconfigured without downtime.

Modular Power (PDU): dramatically reduces the IT equipment installation and reconfiguration, reducing the number of planned downtime by ensuring that the circuit is safe and safe for circuit additions and changes.

Inrow OA and Refrigerant allocation unit (RDU): The ceiling-type refrigeration solution for medium and high density applications can satisfy customers ' preference for anhydrous refrigeration.

Netshelter SX Network cabinet: A rack system optimized for high-density environments.

Q8: Would you please introduce the case of "Green data Center" in your company? It's best to give a specific example of a user's actual situation.

A: APC infrastruxure Integrated System successfully settled in Changchun FAW-Volkswagen Motor Co., Ltd., and help upgrade its center room and backup room, so as to ensure the company's production systems, sales systems, office systems and the normal operation of the corporate network. As an important data center retrofit project for APC in China's auto manufacturing industry, after the renovation of the Changchun FAW-Volkswagen Automotive Co., Ltd. Data Center has become the country's largest automotive manufacturing industry, the highest level of data centers, and in line with the national Class A room standards, representing the Chinese automobile manufacturing industry information construction of a new model.

Through the latest Green data center technology in-depth discussion, careful investigation, in a comprehensive comparison of all options, Changchun FAW-Volkswagen Automotive Co., Ltd. finally selected APC Infrastruxure integrated system, which greatly improved the availability of the computer room system, security and manageability. APC Modular UPS and APC advanced Integrated Data Center design concept, greatly improve the availability of distribution systems, efficient modular UPS use to eliminate the power system caused by the shutdown of the engine room. Via APC's central manager, Netbotz and Schneider Electric's high-level company's world-class security system, with SMS alarm card, staff can use telephones, mobile phones or computers to understand the operation of the data center anytime and anywhere, and truly realize the intelligent management of the data center. At the same time, aiming at the transformation of the unreasonable layout cabinet, the refrigeration efficiency of the machine room is improved effectively, and the efficiency of the data center is greatly improved. As a result, in the FAW-Volkswagen Center room has formed a sound data center management and supervision mechanism, reducing the number of on-site operations, taking into account the availability of data center and the promotion of efficiency.

Q9: One of the big challenges in implementing the "Green Data Center" is "How to evaluate"? Do you have any tools or solutions that you can recommend?

A: In the world, energy efficiency is usually used to evaluate the green energy-saving of data centers, which is often measured by pue formula. The word actually refers to the total amount of power consumed by the entire datacenter divided by it power. But since the data center is a dynamic load, there is a lot of computational standards and metrics behind this formula.

The United States Green Grid Alliance is the only standard for evaluation Pue, APC is one of the initiators of the United States Green Grid Alliance, we advocate the use of this standard formula to calculate, is a dynamic computing data center efficiency. Therefore, we also hope that in China, together with major manufacturers and service providers, as well as the National Standards Association to use common standards.

Q10: Is it convenient for you to make suggestions for users who want to build a "green datacenter"? (for example, how to build a green and energy-efficient data center, what to look for in the process of building a green datacenter, etc.)

A: To create a domestic leading, world-class green data center, the first the sooner the better, the second, the faster the better. At this time, select some of the most experienced and best practice partners, and join together to build a green data center. First of all, consider the data center environment, redundancy requirements, to determine the efficiency objectives of the data center, and secondly to consider the integrity, including the integration of the design and the whole system, in the process of data center operation, but also to carry out real-time monitoring measurement and dynamic adjustment, in order to understand the energy consumption situation, to avoid unnecessary waste, and reduce the energy consumption of power supply and refrigeration according to the demand of business growth.

As the world's leading provider of key power and refrigeration services, Schneider Electric It division can provide all types of enterprises and users from consulting, planning, design to deployment and services, one-stop innovative energy efficiency management products and solutions to help enterprises optimize room space management, to create a green and efficient scalable data center, To ensure business continuity and achieve energy saving up to 30%.