{"id":1181,"date":"2010-05-17T07:00:33","date_gmt":"2010-05-17T15:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.formtek.com\/blog\/?p=1181"},"modified":"2010-05-17T07:00:33","modified_gmt":"2010-05-17T15:00:33","slug":"storage-big-data-centers-protest-cooling-requirements","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/storage-big-data-centers-protest-cooling-requirements\/","title":{"rendered":"Storage: Big Data Centers Protest Cooling Requirements"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s not often that you’ll see tech giants like Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Nokia publicly agree to anything. \u00a0But these companies are united against a new standard<\/a> that controls how they build and operate their data centers. \u00a0The complaints are against a standard issued by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE). \u00a0ASHRAE sets efficiency\u00a0standards that are used in building construction. \u00a0This new standard, ASHRAE Standard 90.1<\/a>, would affect the building of data centers. \u00a0An example of the dislike of the new standard can be seen in this posting by\u00a0Google<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The tech companies are worried that the new guidelines are too “prescriptive” and will block them from innovating different ways to cool their data centers. \u00a0The requirement specifically calls out the use of air or water economizers. \u00a0Air economizers bring in outside fresh air to supplement the cooling from mechanical air conditioners, and their use can often reduce overall energy use. \u00a0It should be noted that Google is currently seeking patents <\/a>on Data Cooling methods that differ from air economizers.<\/p>\n

Nik Simpson from the Burton group commented <\/a>that “the truth is that economizers are just one approach to achieving more efficient energy usage and the best approach will vary based on a host of factors. \u00a0For example, one company might favor widespread adoption of server virtualization as a way to reduce energy consumption, while another might be able to scavenge energy from the waste heat produced by the data center and use it to heat buildings.”<\/p>\n

James Hamilton, and engineer with Amazon, said <\/a>that “I think we’re all uniformly in agreement with ASHRAE in the intent of 90.1. \u00a0What’s needed to make it a truly influential and high-quality standard is that it be changed to be performance-based rather than prescriptive.”<\/p>\n

In a parallel development, recently the US, Japan and Europe have agreed <\/a>to a metric (The Power Usage Effectiveness Metric) for measuring data center efficiency.<\/p>\n

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It’s not often that you’ll see tech giants like Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Nokia publicly agree to anything. \u00a0But these companies are united against a new standard that controls how they build and operate their data centers. \u00a0The complaints are…<\/span><\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-content-management"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}