[LINK] Greening ICT

[Tom Worthington]

At 06:13 AM 8/02/2009, stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote:
> > http://emergingtechnologies.becta.org.uk/index.php?section=etr&rid=14248
> > ... containerised units can be easily deployed direct from manufacture ...
>
>A data-centre in a day .. securily installed on the roof of buildings (by
>helecopter?) ...

There are very few helicopters, or fixed wing aircraft, which could 
lift an ISO shipping container full of computers. Also the average 
roof could not hold the weight of the container. The usual 
arrangement seems to be to put the containers in the car park, in 
which case your office starts to resemble a prison. More at: 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2008/07/data-centre-in-shipping-container-from.html>.

>and beside the other utilities .. perhaps with a solar-panel 
>covering providing the cooling and lighting .. and every Mw is serving Mb! ...

Don't get too excited by the data centre in a shipping container 
idea. It is only applicable to a very small segment of the market. 
There is scope for more efficient data centres using less esoteric 
technology (such as spacing the racks properly). See my Green ICT 
course for details - Week 4: "Energy saving - Data Centres and Client 
Equipment" <http://tomw.net.au/moodle/mod/resource/view.php?id=244> 
and Week 8: "Improving Data Centre Energy Efficiency" 
<http://tomw.net.au/moodle/mod/resource/view.php?id=267>.

There are few organisations in Australia which could make use of the 
computing power which needs as much space as a shipping container. 
Most organisations will only need the equivalent of one rack of 
equipment, or less. One of my ANU colleges has worked out that their 
new server is ten times as efficient as an old one. So the 
organisation will need only one tent the space and power. This is 
before any other efficiencies are taken into account (I expect 
optimization of web applications would achieve another ten fold 
improvement in efficiency).

At this rate the Australian Government would only need about 100 
shipping containers to replace all their large data centes in 
Canberra. Of course it would not make sense to actually use 100 
shipping containers to hold the computers. It would be better to 
build a few cheap industrial warehouses. The roofs could be used for 
solar panels <http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2009/02/solar-air-conditioning.html>.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                      http://www.tomw.net.au/
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Australian National University