MeshBlox Micro Data Centres

DataBlox provides an ideal platform upon which to build a high efficiency infrastructure. Combining high tech innovative design and best of breed technologies DataBlox provides a head start for your next server room or datacentre. Modularity provides a path to easy scalability - match your power and cooling sizes to your equipment and maximise efficiency. If you change your equipment DataBlox changes with you to ensure the best efficiency possible.

 

Benchmarking energy efficiency

PUE	DCiE	Level of Efficiency
3.0	33%	Very Inefficient
2.5	40%	Inefficient
2.0	50%	Average
1.5	67%	Efficient
1.2	83%	Very Efficient

Benchmarking your data center's energy efficiency is a key step towards reducing power consumption and energy costs. Benchmarking allows you to understand the current level of efficiency in your data center or server room, as you implement additional efficiency best practices, it provides a measure to relate the impact of those efficiency modifications.

Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and its reciprocal Data Center infrastructure Efficiency (DCiE) are widely accepted benchmarking standards proposed by the Green Grid. The power used by supporting environmental management systems vs housed equipment is a current industry ratio of 2.5 (PUE) - 40% efficiency.

DataBlox provides a platform enabling your organisation to deliver a ratio of better than 1.2  - 83% efficiency with appropriate management.

The Green Grid, the author of both PUE and DCiE, didn't intend for either metric to compare one facility or containerised solution to another.DataBlox will not achieve a low PUE or high DCIE alone, but it provides you the best of breed efficiency componentry and an environment to monitor and measure efficiency as you add your equipment load.

Efficiency through measurement

Achieving a complete understanding of the energy consumption within a DataBlox is a key step in being able to determine the appropriate steps necessary to improve your energy efficiency. Without the ability to measure efficiency levels become speculative. The primary goal is to reduce operating costs, yet maintaining a high availability environment. One of the highest operating costs is electricity, and accurately measuring its consumption in real-time and historically is critical.

Recently the industry trend has been to measure power consumption to the individual outlet level. The moitoring of power to the individual power outlet in every rack in real-time and historically provides the lowest highest granularity possible. Trends can be developed for which equipment consumes the most power and during what times, determine relationship between overall heat output and power load, and correlated power consumption with operating cost for each piece of equipment.

Matching power usage and equipment activity can help develop schedules for planned outages of certain equipment that is considered non critical during a 24hr cycle. Powering down equipment will save power and cooling energy. Advanced PDUs provide the control of every power outlet remotely.

DataBlox provides a range of fully managed and monitored PDUs for each rack - two per rack - one for each diverse power circuit. the PDU can be selected based on the total load and the type and number of outlets (C19 or C13, 32A or 16A).

Improving equipment load

Building an efficient environment for your equipment is just one part of the equation,  Improving equipment efficiency added to the racks will also improve overall operating costs. Close consideration needs to be given to determining operating power consumption, initial start power requirement and the heat output in BTU/hr. Many equipment manufacturers are now detailing these in the product specifications. Some are offering calculators that provide a convenient way of determining overall power loadings and heat. For example  HP Power Advisor, Dell Energy planner, and Cisco power calculator (need registration)

Building a rack by rack power load and heat loading is a critical step in determining the best DataBlox solution. Heat loads will determine overall cooling capacity required and matching the most efficient cooling option, cooling redundancy, and where any hotspot may be (and better distribution of equipment to avoid them. Power loaing will dtermine over all power input requirements, UPS sizing, generator requirements and provide a baseline to determine operational costs.

The Green Grid. organisation offers several whitepapers and tools to use to calculate and select the best performing equipment.

If you don't have the resources or time MeshBlox and it's partners can provide you with the analysis skills required to determine your power loadings and heat requirements.

High efficiency features

DataBlox combines the industry's recognised best of breed solutions for minimising power consumption, plus adds new innovations developed in Australia. Key features of DataBlox that lead to lower power consumption

1. Composite Insulation - lowering the rate of heat soak from high ambient temperatures. Option of AeroGel advanced composite insulation for even more performance.Ideal for the deployments in extreme temperatures.
2. Distribute this power to only the equipment you decide upon with our unique plug  play power system
3. Fluorescent lighting - only active when staff inside DataBlox.
4. 3ph consolidated and site UPS option - high efficiency dual-bus double conversion options for consolidated and site base UPS which deliver the best current technology efficiency ratings.
5. High Efficiency Industrial cooling systems - Designed to perform in extremes of -40°c to 55°c all year around with environmentally friendly 407c refrigerant.
6. Closed Hot cold-isle containment - maximising the use of hot and cold air separation, increasing cooling system performance and ensuring maximum reliability
7. Configurable room temperature - providing the option to elevate DataBlox internal temperatures to reduce cooling system cycle time
8. Easy integration for Alternative power - using the plug n' play power system allows easy integration of alternative power systems. Either replacing or supplementing the primary power sources.
9. Advanced high capacity DX cooling systems (option) - based on the latest super efficiency compact industrial cooling systems  
10. By using advanced environment monitoring dataloggers your operations staff can build real-time and historical reporting of humidity, temperature (within each rack & externally), airflow and pressure.

Advanced composite insulation provides high levels of protection from heat soak. Optional composite insulation provides the next level of thermal protection with over 15R performance.

Ideal operating parameters

American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) have been a focal point for establishing the level at which IT equipment  and Telecommunications equipment should be cooled. The current ASHRAE inlet air recommendations are for environment range of 18°C to 27°C (64.4°F to 80.6°F) and a humidity dew point of 5.5C to 15C. Ideally the higher this temprature is the less energy will be consumed in cooling by mechanical or passive means. Even minor 1-2°C raising of temprature can have significant effect on the cooling system power consumption. Much industry comment has occured on this topic (eg. Intel's extreme temp tests), the main themes are worth consideration - minor increases in tempratures can reap useful power savings - no significant equipment stability issues are incurred with minor temprature changes.

DataBlox provides a combination of best practices with the use of  close coupled cooling systems,  hot/cold isle airflow, configurable temprature and sealed container environment.

The Green Grid offeres a number of calculator tools to help determine the power savings.

Additional calculators for specific regions:

Europe Calculator

USA Calculator

Australia (maps with avg minimum temprature from Aust. Bureau of Meteorology)

Additionally further operational befefits can be derived from minimising staff access by use of Out of Band Management (OOBM) equipment and intelligent Power Distribution Units (PDU) to provide full remote control of internally housed equipment without the need to access the inner space. This maintains the integrity of the environment and provides lower impact to temprature and humidity. DataBlox units are compatible with a wide range of OOBM and PDU equipment. eg OOBM - OpenGear, PDUs - Eaton

DEFINITION : Power usage effectiveness (PUE) is a metric used to determine the energy efficiency of a data center. PUE is determined by dividing the amount of power entering a data center by the power used to run the computer infrastructure within it. PUE is therefore expressed as a ratio, with overall efficiency improving as the quotient decreases toward 1. PUE was created by members of the Green Grid, an industry group focused on data center energy efficiency. Data center infrastructure efficiency (DCIE) is the reciprocal of PUE and is expressed as a percentage that improves as it approaches 100%.

DEFINITION : Data center infrastructure efficiency (DCIE) is a metric used to determine the energy efficiency of a data center. The metric, which is expressed as a percentage, is calculated by dividing IT equipment power by total facility power. DCIE was developed by members of the Green Grid, an industry group focused on data center energy efficiency.