[AusNOG] Internode goes Carbon Neutral

[Curtis Bayne]

Power is a fickle beast, but a pertinent thing to remember (and this  
is stating the bleeding obvious) is that power savings = a tanglible  
and easy to calculate cost saving that is easy to justify to  
management. If you're a six sigma org then talk to a black belt  
somewhere - they love this optimization stuff.

Even something as simple as rearranging your racks to contain and vent  
hot air can save you non-trivial amounts of money.

To use Mark's point as an example: Imagine the cost savings of  
switching from a ~75% efficent full online UPS vs line interactive at  
~98% efficency at 80KVA. You're throwing away 83 amps on inefficency  
alone - that's about 2k a month at 14c kWh. Over the life of a typical  
data room mechanical equipment replacement cycle (about 10 years from  
what I have seen - this is not an exercise in best practice, it is one  
of reality) this is $240k. That is a non trivial amount of money  
especially when you consider the skyrocketing price of electricity  
combined with my somewhat optomisic tarrif. I would not be surprised  
if this was $300k or more over that length of time.

What about venting hot air if atmosphere temperatue is lower than the  
outtake of the hot aisle (especially if our hot aisle is contained).

Datacentre efficency doesn't have to be hard or expensive, most of the  
time it is a combination of common sense and pragmatic implimentation.

Most of the providers on this list are ISPs and not colo providers -  
if you don't have an IBM or Sun mainframe on your telco/data room  
floor now there's a good chance you never will - do you really need  
those floors raised restricting airflow below and does your floor  
really need to be at 22 degrees? Run your room to service your  
requirements, not to serve an arbitary teired rating system.

Here's a secret: I run mine at 28 and have never had a heat incident.  
We are not a colo so we have full visibility of these issues as they  
occur. Disclosure: We are low density. Your mileage may vary. If you  
break something it wasn't my fault :)

I would be very interested to hear from anyone who is employing of  
these optimization strategies in their organization.

Sent from my iPhone

On 19/11/2009, at 4:51 AM, "Mark Prior" <mrp at mrp.net> wrote:

> Gaurab Raj Upadhaya wrote:
>
>> The company, which has over 170,000 subscribers Australia-wide,  
>> sources
>> 100% of its electricity needs from renewable energy, and has molded  
>> its
>> equipment upgrade purchasing decisions towards energy efficiency and
>> sustainability.
>
>
> While it's nice to see people buying green power what would probably  
> be
> nicer is to use less of the damn stuff in the first place.
>
> I think that Apple have a reasonable approach when they say you should
> consider the whole process and not just concentrate on a small part of
> it (although it's hard to influence what the end consumer does once  
> the
> product is in their hands and out of your control). In that context  
> then
> reducing the power consumption of the network, data centres, etc is as
> important, if not more important, than buying renewable power and then
> potentially wasting it through inefficient IT processes. At a recent
> LINX meeting Lex Coors of Interxion mentioned that they had UPSes from
> two different suppliers and while it was difficult to measure the
> efficiency of each they were surprised to discover how inefficient one
> manufacturer was compared to another.
>
> Mark.
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