POWERING INTERNET HOTELS & MODERN OFFICE BUILDINGS
(Second of a Series)
(Second of a Series)
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN TODAY’S MODERN LIVES
Information Technology is fast becoming the new utility of the 21st century. They are the engines that are fueling the phenomenal growth of the Internet Economy, now known as the ‘New Economy’. Today’s data centers are highly secure, highly reliable, and highly expensive, often window-less, bullet proof fortresses built to move information with maximum efficiency. Internet has become the international access to an enormous amount of information from the simple telephone line.
While the internet and e-commerce continuously showing dramatic growth, over 350 million people were estimated “on-line” worldwide in 2005, with the numbers expected to grow to 400 million by 2006. Retail e-commerce in the US alone was conservatively estimated to be over $ 100 billion in 2005. And Internet Hotels or Data Centers are important players in the equation.
THE INTERNET HOTELS
A Data Center is a sort of a hotel which houses (by rental, by lease or by ownership) all the functions and services of highly advanced technologies, permanently guaranteeing users (Internet Service Providers, Application Services Providers, Telecommunications, etc.) entire satisfaction in terms of security, dependability and reliability 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. Internet Hotels are homes to all sorts of Internet-related companies, through whose servers, routers and modems flow the bits and bytes of modern e-commerce. Internet Hotels can be small as a three-storey building or as big as medium-rise towers.
Running the gamut from Internet hotels that host computer services for Internet service providers to telecom carrier hubs, co-location centers, server farms, and private enterprise data centers, these world-class facilities are custom-designed with raised floors, sophisticated environmental control systems, seismically braced racks, and redundant power systems to ensure failsafe site performance of 24/7.
THE TASK OF THE NEW GENERATION ELECTRICAL ENGINEERS
What does it mean to the electrical engineers who are here in this conference?
The engineering community now faces the task of selecting the correct power-system topology for data centers & other IT environments. By evaluating popular power-system topologies, there has emerged a shift in paradigm as deviations from the traditional way of systems designing has dramatically changed.
There are two things here that are worthwhile mentioning and I would like to invite your attention again to the following: a) The Internet Hotels or Data Centers; and, b) The Modern Corporate Office Buildings.
There are many things in common to these facilities but one of them is what I would like to highlight: IT. And the IT revolution has affected the very onus of electrical systems designing…and we, electrical engineers must be the first ones to be aware of. For instance…,
HOW MUCH LOAD WILL DATA CENTERS ACTUALLY REQUIRE?
Information Technology is fast becoming the new utility of the 21st century. They are the engines that are fueling the phenomenal growth of the Internet Economy, now known as the ‘New Economy’. Today’s data centers are highly secure, highly reliable, and highly expensive, often window-less, bullet proof fortresses built to move information with maximum efficiency. Internet has become the international access to an enormous amount of information from the simple telephone line.
While the internet and e-commerce continuously showing dramatic growth, over 350 million people were estimated “on-line” worldwide in 2005, with the numbers expected to grow to 400 million by 2006. Retail e-commerce in the US alone was conservatively estimated to be over $ 100 billion in 2005. And Internet Hotels or Data Centers are important players in the equation.
THE INTERNET HOTELS
A Data Center is a sort of a hotel which houses (by rental, by lease or by ownership) all the functions and services of highly advanced technologies, permanently guaranteeing users (Internet Service Providers, Application Services Providers, Telecommunications, etc.) entire satisfaction in terms of security, dependability and reliability 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. Internet Hotels are homes to all sorts of Internet-related companies, through whose servers, routers and modems flow the bits and bytes of modern e-commerce. Internet Hotels can be small as a three-storey building or as big as medium-rise towers.
Running the gamut from Internet hotels that host computer services for Internet service providers to telecom carrier hubs, co-location centers, server farms, and private enterprise data centers, these world-class facilities are custom-designed with raised floors, sophisticated environmental control systems, seismically braced racks, and redundant power systems to ensure failsafe site performance of 24/7.
THE TASK OF THE NEW GENERATION ELECTRICAL ENGINEERS
What does it mean to the electrical engineers who are here in this conference?
The engineering community now faces the task of selecting the correct power-system topology for data centers & other IT environments. By evaluating popular power-system topologies, there has emerged a shift in paradigm as deviations from the traditional way of systems designing has dramatically changed.
There are two things here that are worthwhile mentioning and I would like to invite your attention again to the following: a) The Internet Hotels or Data Centers; and, b) The Modern Corporate Office Buildings.
There are many things in common to these facilities but one of them is what I would like to highlight: IT. And the IT revolution has affected the very onus of electrical systems designing…and we, electrical engineers must be the first ones to be aware of. For instance…,
HOW MUCH LOAD WILL DATA CENTERS ACTUALLY REQUIRE?
In Europe in 2001 (the start of Internet explosion in Europe), installed power (connected load) for Internet Hotels had been established at 1.5 kVA/sq meter, excluding back up devices, and seemed all set to double within the next ten years. In only four years time (2006), the envisioned doubling of loads has now nearly reached. From this experience, the global power required to supply these buildings is thus appreciated to be very great and its timetable short.
Particularly electric intensive, The ‘Internet Hotels’ in the USA is now considered as a new ‘power consumer sector’ with usage per square foot at least 10 to 15 times more than typical office buildings when fully built-out. High Density Data Centers (HDDC’s) are ‘Class 1 Clean Rooms’ needing systems to remove particulate matter and cooling for the removal of heat. According to Mike Hellmann’s paper entitled, “Smarter Ways to Bring Power to Critical Power Facilities” as published by CyberTech Inc., dated Dec 19, 2002, he says, “depending on the nature of the IT equipment and its packing density, connected loads in these environments can range from 100 watts to a stunning 300 watts per square foot in the USA today”. With an average load density factor of 200 watts per square foot or 2,150 watts per sq meter, that is, in other words; 2.53 kVA per sq meter — that’s a lot of concentrated power imaginable.
HIGH RELIABILITY REQUIREMENTS
Particularly electric intensive, The ‘Internet Hotels’ in the USA is now considered as a new ‘power consumer sector’ with usage per square foot at least 10 to 15 times more than typical office buildings when fully built-out. High Density Data Centers (HDDC’s) are ‘Class 1 Clean Rooms’ needing systems to remove particulate matter and cooling for the removal of heat. According to Mike Hellmann’s paper entitled, “Smarter Ways to Bring Power to Critical Power Facilities” as published by CyberTech Inc., dated Dec 19, 2002, he says, “depending on the nature of the IT equipment and its packing density, connected loads in these environments can range from 100 watts to a stunning 300 watts per square foot in the USA today”. With an average load density factor of 200 watts per square foot or 2,150 watts per sq meter, that is, in other words; 2.53 kVA per sq meter — that’s a lot of concentrated power imaginable.
HIGH RELIABILITY REQUIREMENTS
As Mr. Hellmann continues, “in this New Economy environment, the appetite for power is rivaled only by an insatiable need for reliability. In a world where minutes of downtime can translate to losses in the millions of dollars; when it comes to delivering power, the guarantee of reliability and capacity is a leading priority. As a result, Internet Hotels are amongst the most power-hungry of today’s critical power environments”.
Internet Hotels have built their businesses based on the assurance of plentiful power capacity and ironclad reliability. Assuring the reliability of the incoming power source means installing multiple sources of incoming power with dual utility feeds, usually from different substations or power utility grids that are interconnected to the facility’s main systems via circuit breakers. Dual unit substations are then used to step down and deliver power to the server cages, racks, cabinets and server farms. Thus, if one power source or high voltage line goes down, the system can switch to the redundant feed in a fraction of a cycle—a matter of milliseconds—without losing any electrical load. Likewise, if a transformer fails, the backup system picks up the load instantaneously, notwithstanding the electronic stationary UPS’s and another additional rotary UPS’s. Thus new reliability lingo’s have given rise to the novel terms as: N+1, N+2, N+3 or N+n which speaks for the degree of redundancy.
Powerful servers require high quality and reliable electricity, as electronic equipment cannot tolerate interruptions in electricity for more than a couple hundredths of a second. This translates into a need for an electricity supply that is at least available 99.9999% (also known as “six nines”) of the year. The need for highly reliable electricity is even more acute for the services that Internet Data Centers support. E-commerce firms & e-markets will lose millions of dollars and customers if they fail while transactions are occurring. When electricity is unreliable, web-hosting services, along with other high technology and new economy companies, may choose to relocate.
For instance, the ongoing electricity crisis in California has led many new economy companies to rethink their California operations. Web hosting companies, such as Rackspace, are actively marketing their non-California-based locations to gain new business and steal business from California hosting sites. Thus today, reliability requirements have been elevated from six-nines to nine-9’s (99.9999999%) meaning a downtime of only 30 milliseconds per year. That means colossal investments by the utility companies & Data Center owners for the several layers of costly back-ups & redundancy.
In the data center world, promising and delivering power reliability in the “high nines”—doesn’t come cheap. Requiring a continuous source of high-quality uninterrupted power, critical Internet infrastructures must rely on internal power quality protection systems. The caliber of these systems is often a defining factor for users who increasingly feel the ill effects of power-related problems in millions of dollars per incident.
The ‘Reliability Nines’ are new measurements for service dependability, consistency and trustworthiness packaged in official terms as reliability. To compare with other types of services, the following new global standards may give some insights & discoveries for us here in this conference:
1) Homes: Three 9’s (99.9%), 9 hours downtime per year
2) Factories/Manufacturing Plants: Four 9’s (99.99%), 59 minutes per year
3) Hospitals, Airports: Five 9’s (99.999%), 5 minutes per year
4) Banks: Six 9’s (99.9999), 32 seconds per year
5) E-Commerce/On-Line Markets: Nine 9’s, 30 milli-seconds per year
A few years ago, a performance of four-9’s by Power Utility companies, (meaning 59 minutes per year downtime) was acceptable. However, in ‘mission-critical’ operations such as e-commerce & e-markets, a reliability of six-9’s (32 seconds downtime per year) is now required of these utility companies. As trade-off, other systems enhancements for redundancy purposes to reach nine-9’s are understood to be of the data center owner’s concern.
HIGH LOAD FACTOR
Internet Hotels have built their businesses based on the assurance of plentiful power capacity and ironclad reliability. Assuring the reliability of the incoming power source means installing multiple sources of incoming power with dual utility feeds, usually from different substations or power utility grids that are interconnected to the facility’s main systems via circuit breakers. Dual unit substations are then used to step down and deliver power to the server cages, racks, cabinets and server farms. Thus, if one power source or high voltage line goes down, the system can switch to the redundant feed in a fraction of a cycle—a matter of milliseconds—without losing any electrical load. Likewise, if a transformer fails, the backup system picks up the load instantaneously, notwithstanding the electronic stationary UPS’s and another additional rotary UPS’s. Thus new reliability lingo’s have given rise to the novel terms as: N+1, N+2, N+3 or N+n which speaks for the degree of redundancy.
Powerful servers require high quality and reliable electricity, as electronic equipment cannot tolerate interruptions in electricity for more than a couple hundredths of a second. This translates into a need for an electricity supply that is at least available 99.9999% (also known as “six nines”) of the year. The need for highly reliable electricity is even more acute for the services that Internet Data Centers support. E-commerce firms & e-markets will lose millions of dollars and customers if they fail while transactions are occurring. When electricity is unreliable, web-hosting services, along with other high technology and new economy companies, may choose to relocate.
For instance, the ongoing electricity crisis in California has led many new economy companies to rethink their California operations. Web hosting companies, such as Rackspace, are actively marketing their non-California-based locations to gain new business and steal business from California hosting sites. Thus today, reliability requirements have been elevated from six-nines to nine-9’s (99.9999999%) meaning a downtime of only 30 milliseconds per year. That means colossal investments by the utility companies & Data Center owners for the several layers of costly back-ups & redundancy.
In the data center world, promising and delivering power reliability in the “high nines”—doesn’t come cheap. Requiring a continuous source of high-quality uninterrupted power, critical Internet infrastructures must rely on internal power quality protection systems. The caliber of these systems is often a defining factor for users who increasingly feel the ill effects of power-related problems in millions of dollars per incident.
The ‘Reliability Nines’ are new measurements for service dependability, consistency and trustworthiness packaged in official terms as reliability. To compare with other types of services, the following new global standards may give some insights & discoveries for us here in this conference:
1) Homes: Three 9’s (99.9%), 9 hours downtime per year
2) Factories/Manufacturing Plants: Four 9’s (99.99%), 59 minutes per year
3) Hospitals, Airports: Five 9’s (99.999%), 5 minutes per year
4) Banks: Six 9’s (99.9999), 32 seconds per year
5) E-Commerce/On-Line Markets: Nine 9’s, 30 milli-seconds per year
A few years ago, a performance of four-9’s by Power Utility companies, (meaning 59 minutes per year downtime) was acceptable. However, in ‘mission-critical’ operations such as e-commerce & e-markets, a reliability of six-9’s (32 seconds downtime per year) is now required of these utility companies. As trade-off, other systems enhancements for redundancy purposes to reach nine-9’s are understood to be of the data center owner’s concern.
HIGH LOAD FACTOR
Internet data centers have high load factors. The ‘always on-line’ nature of the Internet translates into the need for 24/7 operation for companies and services associated with the Internet, especially with regard to servers and storage facilities at Internet data centers. Research on the load behaviors of data centers suggests an almost flat load curve with a load factor of over 95 percent or close to unity.
(to be continued...)
(to be continued...)
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