Server running efficiency determines data center "color"

Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology Institute of Telecommunications, China Telecom, China Mobile, Unicom, Tencent and other 20 units jointly released about China's data Center Energy Efficiency Evaluation Guide. The guide is an effort by national research institutions and large data center enterprises to change the current status of the current data center's inefficiency, providing a reference for comparison of energy efficiency between different data centers.

The green is pulse by Pue value

The Pue value is widely accepted and adopted at home and abroad to measure the energy efficiency of a data center infrastructure.

At present, foreign Advanced data Center room Pue value is usually less than 2, while most of our data center Pue value between 2~3.

At present, China has not established a unified data center Energy Efficiency Index system, also lacks the corresponding appraisal standard, therefore, the energy efficiency result which each data center announces lacks the comparability. And the energy efficiency of data center is directly related to the development of energy saving and environmental protection and cloud computing industry, and it is a problem that the whole country and even the whole world pay attention to.

According to research, it-related carbon emissions have become one of the world's largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions, a year of 860 million tons of carbon emissions, and the emissions momentum in this area is also with the global demand for computing, data storage and communication technology increased rapidly. It is expected that by 2020, global IT-related carbon emissions will reach 1.54 billion tonnes. Therefore, the construction of green room has become the focus of reducing it carbon emissions, energy saving and consumption reduction.

Pue value is widely accepted and adopted at home and abroad to measure the energy efficiency of a data center infrastructure, it is the ratio of total power consumption of data center to IT equipment power consumption. The closer the Pue value is to 1, the higher the degree of greening of a data center.

It is reported that the current China has various types of data center 40多万个, the number accounted for about 13% of the world. 2011, China's data center total power consumption of 70 billion-kilowatt, has accounted for the whole society of electricity consumption of about 1.5%, the equivalent of the 2011 Tianjin total consumption.

According to the reporter understand, the current foreign Advanced data Center room Pue value is usually less than 2, and most of our data center Pue value between 2~3.

The Ministry of Industry and Information technology in the "industrial energy Saving" Twelve-Five "plan", "by 2015, data center PUE value needs to drop 8%". The "Cloud Computing Demonstration Project", which is organized by the National Development and Reform Commission and other departments, also requires that the PUE value of the data center of demonstration project construction should reach below 1.5.

In this context, the new Data Center Energy Efficiency assessment Guidelines were released. It defines 4 key energy efficiency indicators, such as power utilization efficiency (PUE), local PUE (PPUE), refrigeration/Power load factor (CLF/PLF) and Renewable Energy (RER) utilization, and presents corresponding measurement methods and data release requirements. The Department of Industry and Information Technology, deputy dean of the Institute of Telecommunications, Liu Do, this guide combines the relevant units of cloud computing, data center energy saving and other aspects of the vision, will be in China's data center to contribute to energy conservation.

Need comprehensive consideration to realize green

The operational efficiency of the server ultimately determines whether the data center is really green, and the core system is the key to computational efficiency.

In the future large-scale cloud computing data center, we need to consider computing nodes and storage nodes synthetically to improve the computing and storage resources of the server.

At present, the most metric used by green data centers is the Pue value, and other metrics in the index system are basically related to the energy consumed. But building green data centers should focus on more than just infrastructure energy consumption.

Zhang Yunyong of the research department of China Unicom Group, Green Data Center is a very complex system, which includes 4 layers from bottom to top. The first and lowest level, mainly infrastructure, including room, power supply, refrigeration, lighting and so on. The second tier is the virtualization of it devices, including cloud computing architectures, server architectures, CPUs, memory, and so on. The third tier is the network of data centers, including network architectures suitable for horizontal scaling, the virtualization of network cards, and the migration of data. The top fourth layer is automated management and process automation. "Most of us pay more attention at the bottom, but in the long run, the above three levels also require extensive attention," he said. "He thought.

The key to Green is the efficiency of the core system and the entire data center. Aliyun President Jian said that the data center only has pue value is not enough, the server's operational efficiency ultimately determines whether the data center is really green, and the core system is the key to computational efficiency. Because the cost of disposing of a machine is high, it can be most efficient only when thousands of computers in the data center work like a computer. He also stressed that the operation of the data center is the core competitiveness of the construction, a system to build the operation of the dimension is inefficient. When the data center is composed of 1000 separate servers, there will be a machine failure every moment. If the operational capabilities are not up to date, the data center's ability to run services can be compromised.

Consider the cost of saving energy. Zhang Yunyong told the "China Electronic newspaper" reporter, if the emphasis on PUE indicators, then the current maturity of the relevant new technologies may lead to high costs, so the need to comprehensively consider the balance of technical indicators. For example, if a data center is built in a more remote location to achieve the goal of reducing energy consumption by natural energy sources, it may also be difficult to find electricity.

Similarly, Tencent's data center project in Tianjin is encountering similar problems. TANJEF, assistant general manager of Tencent, said the use of the Northern weather advantage does reduce the temperature of the engine room, but also because of some local air pollution and increased maintenance costs, such as frequent replacement of the screen. "Pue is only one aspect, the pursuit of the ultimate, there is a limit." In the future large-scale cloud computing data center, we need to consider computing nodes and storage nodes synthetically to improve the computing and storage resources of the server. ”

According to Tencent's experience, he thinks, do not pursue the acme of Pue value, must reach 1.1 or 1.0, now more feasible should be 1.25~1.4.