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Tier Standard: Operational Sustainability
Uptime Institute's Tier Standard: Operational Sustainability establishes the behaviors and risks beyond the Tier Classification System (I, II, III, IV) that impact long-term data center performance. This Standard unifies the site management behaviors with the Tier functionality of the site infrastructure in order to achieve the organization's business objectives or mission imperatives.
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Tier Standard: Topology
The Institute Tier Standard: Topology is an objective basis for comparing the functionality, capacity, and expected availability (or performance) of a particular site infrastructure design topology against other sites, or for comparing a group of sites. This standard describes criteria to differentiate four classifications of site infrastructure topology based on increasing levels of redundant capacity components and distribution paths. This standard focuses on the definitions of the four Tiers and the performance confirmation tests for determining compliance to the definitions. The Commentary, in a separate section, provides practical examples of site infrastructure system designs and configurations that fulfill the Tier definitions as a means to clarify the Tier classification criteria.
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Accredited Tier Designer Technical Paper Series: Makeup Water
The Accredited Tier Designer Technical Paper Series supplements the Data Center Site Infrastructure Tier Standard: Topology by providing additional clarity on the Tier consequences of specific subsystems. This technical paper was prompted by the interactions at the 2009 Accredited Tier Designer sessions and industry comments and queries. This technical paper provides additional detail regarding the Tier consequences of makeup water source.
New!
Accredited Tier Designer Technical Paper Series: Engine-Generator Ratings
The Accredited Tier Designer Technical Paper Series supplements the Data Center Site Infrastructure Tier Standard: Topology by providing additional clarity on the Tier consequences of specific subsystems. This technical paper was prompted by the interactions at the 2009 Accredited Tier Designer sessions and industry comments and queries. This technical paper provides additional detail regarding the Tier consequences of engine-generators and their ratings.
Natural Disaster Risk Profiles for Data Centers
The highest level of functionality in a data center can easily be defeated by a local or regional disaster. Natural Disaster Risk Profiles presents an outline of the data center consequences expected from specific types of severe weather. The Natural Disasters Risk Locations Map geographically indicates degrees of vulnerability by type of disaster and data center location within the U.S.
Cost Model:
Dollars per kW plus Dollars per Square Floor of Computer Floor (Update July 2010)
For many years, the data center industry has used dollars per square foot of computer room space to benchmark the construction cost of a data center. This has led many data center owners to reduce the amount of space in an attempt to control project costs. This approach generally produces disappointing results because it is based on a false premise. Originally, 16 actual construction projects were used by the Uptime Institute to identify their primary cost drivers and develop a new and more accurate construction cost model. This model emphasizes the "engine" capacity and functionality aspects of a data center, in addition to the space itself. This revised model features refinements to the first edition, including an update to the cost model based on four additional data center projects completed since.
Continuous Cooling is Required for Continuous Availability: Data Center Managers Need to Match Their Availability Expectations
Technology compaction is producing ever-increasing power and heat densities in computer equipment racks and computer rooms.
2005-2010 Heat Density Trends in Data Processing, Computer Systems,
and Telecommunications Equipment
For many years, the data center industry has used dollars per square foot of computer room space to benchmark the construction of a data center. This has led many data center owners to reduce the amount of space in an attempt to control the project cost.
Changing Cooling Requirements Leave Many Data Centers At Risk
As uptime expectations continue to grow and new computer technology replaces mainframe chilled water with air-side cooling, the performance demand on data center HVAC systems is rapidly increasing.
How to Meet "24 by Forever" Cooling Demands of your Data Center
Matching IT expectations with facility staffing and site infrastructure capabilities is critical to ensure the reliability of data center operations. This paper tells you how to reconcile expectations with resources.
Reducing Bypass Airflow Is Essential for Eliminating Computer Room Hot Spots
As hardware heat densities continue to increase, hot racks or cabinets will increasingly be a serious threat to IT reliability and performance.
IT and Facilities Initiatives for Improved Data Center Energy Efficiency
This paper:
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Presents five IT-related efficiency initiatives
- Presents an additional five facilities-related efficiency improvements
- Cautions data center operators that efficiency should be pursued carefully, to avoid negative reliability impacts
Update! Uptime Institute: Revolutionizing Data Center Efficiency
This Institute Update expands the scope of the original Revolutionizing Data Center Efficiency report by demonstrating the significant benefits of adopting the Report's three recommendations. Using the example of a 40,000 sq.ft. data center with a current utility load of 5 MW, the Update compares a baseline "business as usual" approach versus appointing an Energy Czar over a 4-year period.
By following the Report's recommendations, the data center would realize OpEx and CapEx savings of $144 million and a greenhouse gas emissions reduction of 112,000 tons. In addition, the data center's expected utility load increase would be 6 MW less than under a "business as usual" scenario.
Opinion of the Institute: The Economic Stimulus Law, Obama's Call for Carbon Cap, and Their Likely Impact on Data Centers
The economic stimulus bill recently passed by Congress (titled the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) will likely impact the data center industry by spurring growth in certain kinds of IT services and by making money available for research and development to improve data center efficiency.
Opinion of the Institute: Clean Computing
Clean Computing is not just about alternative energy sources and recycling e-waste. The challenges of global warming and energy independence mean that companies that do not adopt Clean Computing practices may soon find themselves under increased government scrutiny, or worse, targeted by eco-savvy consumers. Clean Computing means the manufacture, packaging, use, and disposal of IT equipment does not use hazardous materials or produce harmful waste—at any stage.
Opinion of the Institute: Green Computing
To achieve significant savings in energy consumption, a set of metrics for objectively measuring data center facility performance is a must. In this Opinion paper, the Institute discusses several different metrics that are currently being utilized in the market as well as several “quick-hitter” techniques that CIOs can employ for additional energy savings within their data center.
Uptime Institute Defines Lean Computing
The push for computers that are better, cheaper, and faster is the same as it has been for decades, but the meaning of those terms is undergoing a radical shift. ‘Better’ now refers to more to the optimization of computers than to radically new features. ‘Faster’ is more about virtual machines and cross-server optimization than about the clock speed of a processor. And ‘cheaper’ now focuses as much on energy savings as on the upfront purchase price and dollar per MIPS.
The new definitions can be summed up rather succinctly as Lean Computing. The goal is to maximize IT assets by leveraging new techniques, concepts, and technologies, concepts, and technologies such as virtualization and cloud computing, which enable enterprises to take advantage of economies of scale in the data center.
Opinion of the Uptime Institute:
Using ITIL to Gain Data Center Efficiency
Runaway data center energy consumption can be tamed by using existing best practices and metrics. The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) provides a proven process framework that yields sustained high availability. Applied to the problems of data center energy consumption, ITIL best practices and processes can help organizations achieve significant energy savings.
ITIL:
How to Manage the Coming Convergence of IT and Facilities
The communication gap between Facilities and IT can be closed by using the principles based on the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) framework. This paper proposes that IT organizations and building facilities teams are being driven closer together by the demands of power and cooling in today’s data centers. This process is creating a mutual interest in each other’s projects, plans, processes, and overall business management.
Revolutionizing Data Center Efficiency (2008 McKinsey / Institute Report)
First presented at the Institute’s 2008 Symposium, Green Enterprise Computing: Capitalizing on Current Opportunities and Exploring Future Trends in Energy Efficiency, this jointly developed report by Will Forrest of McKinsey & Company and Ken Brill of the Uptime Institute outlines the severe negative financial consequences of continuing high levels of data center investment. The Report presents findings, drivers of poor efficiency, recommendations, and a goal for doubling data center efficiency using a new business metric titled CADE (Corporate Average Datacenter Efficiency).
Special Report: Energy Efficiency Strategies Survey Results
According to the latest Uptime Institute survey on energy efficiency strategies, energy consumption in most data centers continues to increase despite the efforts many operators are making to become more energy efficient. Find out why in this special report.
Special Report:
Data Center Capacity and Energy Efficiency Survey
If green is the topic of the day, how much attention and effort are green initiatives actually getting in enterprise computing organizations today? To answer this question, the Institute developed a data center capacity and energy efficiency survey. The survey was distributed to 21,000 facilities, IT, and other professionals throughout the enterprise computing industry. The survey clearly struck a nerve among industry professional: the bulk of survey responses were received in fewer than 24 hours after being distributed. This report provides a summary of the results.
New Product Review:
Self-Contained Computer Room in a Shipping Container from Sun Microsystems
The purpose of this new product review is to verify, authenticate, and render technical opinion on the design and manufacturing specifications and on the product marketing claims made for the Sun MD. Its purpose is also to help Sun and the Institute appropriately advise their prospective customers on what they need to know and do to ensure the proper installation and integration of the Sun MD with their critical computing environments to meet performance requirements for computing availability, reliability, and resiliency.
Executive Director's Report: The Findings of the 2007 Charrette
The Charrette demonstrated that our industry challenge right now is not in coming up with fundamentally new site-infrastructure systems, but is to be found in improving the actual operational efficiency of what we already have deployed. This report highlights some of what we learned in the Tracks and working groups of the Charrette.
Validus DC Systems' Response (2007 Charrette)
The Uptime Institute recently provided a revised executive summary of the October 2007 Design Charrette that included opinions and remarks regarding the implementation of DC power in the data center that we believe require clarification. While the report acknowledges the attention currently being devoted to the use of DC power in the data center, in our view the report minimizes the DC distribution momentum and may have misinterpreted the facts that support implementation of DC power in the data center. The Validus team appreciates the opportunity to clarify these points, and would like to,bring several key points of proof to the attention of the Institute and data center stakeholders by addressing the Institute’s primary objections, point by point.
Four Metrics Define Data Center "Greenness"
Large-scale enterprise data centers can meet business requirements for IT availability and performance while profitably achieving many corporate environmental sustainability objectives. This paper defines four factors that determine relative data center greenness and enable energy and power consumption benchmarking.
A Simple Model for Determining True Total Cost of Ownership for Data Centers
This paper presents a simple approach that enables C-suite managers to assess the true total costs of building, owning, and operating their data center physical facilities.
The spreadsheet model can be easily customized to reflect any company’s profile.
Opinion of the Institute: EPA Report Should Spur Industry-Wide Green Data Center Movement
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Report to Congress on Server and Data Center Energy Efficiency (pursuant to Public Law 109-431) will likely raise awareness of the need for immediate improvements in data center energy efficiency and, perhaps, formally launch the green data center movement. To restore the economic benefits of Moore’s Law at the whole-system level of the data center, this Opinion of the Institute paper focuses on the four key concepts that we believe can make an early and quantitatively substantial difference in the industry’s energy-consumption future. The Institute also presents four factors that, at this early stage, it believes defines the green data center of the future.
The Invisible Crisis in the Data Center:
The Economic Meltdown of Moore’s Law
In this research report, the Institute examines the true economic productivity of large-scale server computing and the enterprise data center. This paper reviews how facilities’ costs (site OpEx and CapEx) have grown from the historic one to three percent of IT’s total budget to somewhere between five to 15 percent, and outlines necessary changes in IT governance, computer room management, and IT hardware requirements that can bring this phenomenon under control. As the first major output from the Institute’s Symposium in early 2007, this paper explores the repercussions of Moore’s Law from the perspective of the net economic productivity of enterprise IT operating as a whole system, including data center site infrastructure (power and cooling).
Opinion of the Institute: Intel’s 45-nanometer Chip Innovation Announcement
In the last week of January, Intel announced a significant breakthrough in transistor materials that it claims will extend Moore’s Law well into the next decade and achieve dramatic computing energy savings.
Data Center Energy Efficiency and Productivity
The largely invisible costs of providing power, cooling and environmental site support infrastructure are increasing far faster than the performance gained from buying new servers.
High-Density Computing: The Path Forward 2006
This paper is part of an ongoing collaborative process of a group known as the Symposium Fellows’ Working Group. The Invisible Crisis in the Data Center, March 4-7, 2007, Orlando, FL.
Pre-approval Checklist for Alternative Cooling Solution Deployment
Beyond a limit, rising computer room load densities conflict with the physical ability of traditional air cooling as a transfer medium to rapidly remove heat from computer rooms.
Alternating Cold and Hot Aisles Provides More Reliable Cooling for Server Farms
As uptime expectations continue to grow and new computer technology replaces mainframe chilled water with air-side cooling, the performance demand on data center HVAC systems is rapidly increasing.
Fault-Tolerant Power Certification Is Essential When Buying Products For High-Availability
IT organizations report that 25 percent of all information downtime results from the interaction of computer hardware with its physical environment.
Site Uptime Procedures and Guidelines For Safely Performing Work in an Active Data Center
Critical procedures and guidelines must be followed to correctly and safely perform work in an active data center.
This research report lists
proven methods for avoiding unplanned
downtime and its business consequences. These procedures
and guidelines were developed by
applying proven best practices and
practical wisdom from nearly one
hundred critical sites.
Zinc Whiskers Growing on Raised-Floor Tiles Are Causing Conductive Failures and Equipment Shutdowns
Conductive contamination of computer-room equipment has been discovered to be a significant problem caused by “zinc whiskers” shorting out logic cards and power supplies.
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