Alternating current (AC) power is ubiquitous in data centers, and it's hard to change the status quo. But a direct current (DC) power demonstration project conducted by the Lawrence Berkely National Laboratory produced some interesting results: a 7% energy savings over top-notch AC technologies.

SearchDataCenter.com recently reported on an experiment in using DC power in a data center at Syracuse University, furthering the practical research into this data center power option. While total DC power infrastructure for data centers isn't quite ready, these investigations are putting the concept on the top of mind for data center professionals concerned about power consumption.

Will DC Take to the Data Center?  DC Power could save a bundle, but tech managers are just exploring it.  

More than a century after DC bowed to AC as the most efficient method of electrical distribution, DC is getting a second look. But this time around, the ambitions of DC supporters are more narrowly focused. They're touting DC over AC as a way to make the facilities that house massive and power-ravenous data computing, storage, and communications systems more energy efficient. In a replay of the original AC-DC fight, however, AC supporters counter that tried-and-true AC, especially if it's optimized for efficiency, still reigns superior.

The battle is taking place against a backdrop of the surging "green" movement and an increased awareness of how much energy data centers use (and waste) because of how they're configured. Electrical engineering conferences, white papers, and demonstration projects that assess the comparable benefits of AC and DC for data centers have been proliferating. They've accelerated since 2006, when Congress directed the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy to oversee efforts to mitigate spiraling data center power consumption.

Has AC met its match?

DC has emerged as one possible fix, primarily because it would eliminate one of the biggest sources of energy loss and waste with AC - the multiple back-and-forth transformations and conditioning needed to step voltage down for use by IT equipment. By converting high-voltage AC to DC earlier, keeping it in DC form, and delivering it directly to rack-based servers, energy loss from conversion and the resultant heat that must be removed with cooling that also requires energy could be reduced. In fact, some studies peg energy savings as high as 30%.

>>Tell us your thoughts - send in a comment.

>>Join DVL's Users' Group

All signs point to 10 Gigabit and 40 Gigabit Ethernet gathering steam in the coming year. 

Tidbits and predictions include 10 Gigabit and 40 Gigiabit Ethernet. Expect to see plenty of 10 Gigabit on server motherboards. You can even expect to see some 10 Gigabit Ethernet LAN-on-a-motherboard by early next year. All of which means 10 Gigibit at the edge and the start of 40 Gigabit in the core.

10 Gigabit Ethernet is a good starting point at the edge. It increases the bandwidth capacity for the backbone, and reduces network latency. And because it’s Ethernet, there’s built-in plug-and-play with existing equipment, reducing administration and operating costs.

Moreover, with 10 Gigabit Ethernet, there’s a clear roadmap to 40 Gigabit and 100 Gigabit Ethernet, which will be vital in meeting the growing bandwidth requirements that come with cloud computing.

>> Read more now

How to tame these high density racks with containment data center design?

10 Data Center Predictions For 2012

The Ever Greener Data Center

>> Read more now

With industry forecasts predicting that server and data center energy consumption will nearly double from 2006 to 2011 nationally, the U.S. EPA is encouraging organizations to improve data center energy efficiency.  To help organizations meet this goal, the EPA has announced updates to the energy efficiency requirements for a variety of Energy Star qualified products and equipment for data centers.

"All Energy Star labeled data center products will come with an associated Power and Performance Datasheet (PPDS) that lists product information and detailed test results," said EPA. "Energy Star recognizes that data center products are highly complex systems that require more than just a label to understand their energy performance. All data center products will be tested according to their specific Energy Star test procedure, the results of which will be reported in a standardized format in the PPDS."

In the update, EPA announced new spec process for Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS), Data Center Storage, and Servers V2.0.  

>>Read the entire artilcle now  

>>Top 12 Ways To Decrease Energy Consumption of Your Data Center

Emerson's LEED Data Center | Discover the strategies and technologies Emerson employed to maximize efficiency, scalability and reliability in their state-of-the-art data center.

At any given moment, millions of financial transactions, e-mail, and online videos may be coursing through the circuitry of one of the massive computer server farms that have proliferated in the Internet age.  In Alfonso Ortega's thinking, it's a lot of hot air. He's not talking about spam.  

The Internet generates a huge amount of waste heat, said Ortega, a Villanova University professor of energy technology.  By some estimates, 3 percent of the nation's electricity is devoted to computer processing and data centers, enough to light up a couple of states. The cost of cooling the equipment nearly equals the cost of powering the computers that process the bits and bytes, said Ortega, who is also the college of engineering's associate dean for graduate studies and research.

"People started to pay attention when companies said, 'Wow, unbelievable, we're now eating up half of our costs just to keep this thing cool,' " he said.

Ortega's Villanova team, along with a consortium of four other universities and four area corporate partners, were recently awarded a five-year, $3.4 million grant by the National Science Foundation to study ways to improve energy usage at data centers. The effort is formally called the Industry/University Cooperative Research Center in Energy-Efficient Electronic Systems.  

DVL is one of the four area corporate partners, at the forefront of the data center industry research.

> Read The Full Philadelphia Inquirer Story Here

____________________________________________________________________

Great Ideas To Design A Better Server Room

While increasing energy efficiency has been a growing initiative in data centers across the country, largely due to demands to “do more with less” in a challenging economy, an amalgamation of myths related to data center “greening” and a general lack of understanding of how to approach and achieve it has had a significant negative impact on the universal adoption of true “green IT” practices. 

Most data center managers have no direct visibility to the data center’s total energy consumption with respect to the IT and facilities infrastructure, especially when the data center/computer room is located in a mixed-use building. Fortunately, the emergence of Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) solutions is driving a paradigm shift where the gap between IT and facility infrastructures is being bridged to offer a holistic use of resource utilization throughout the data center.

>> Read more now 

DVL Data Center Design and Best Practice Guide

How To Effectively and Efficiently Design Cost Effective Rack Rows

How To Select Cost Effective KW/Rack Designs