[LINK] Greening ICT

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

>> A data-centre in a day, securely installed on the roof of buildings 

Your comments make sense, Tom. However, i do believe that one of those
smaller shipping containers (not the 40 foot ISO container) or perhaps
a skip-size container could indeed be popular set-up as a turn-key ICT
solution. Imho, all utilities (eg such as IT boxes) should be isolated
from humans .. they dont need to be upfront and behind glass & on-show
as in the old mainframe tradition. We dont have water-heaters featured
inside buildings, why dozens of hot-black-boxes? Put these on the roof
when they arrive, complete with sat-antennas etc and pre-configured to 
work with just normal power & data connections. Easy installation, and
a snap to replace, decommission & haul-away/re-cycle. Take your points
Tom, but still a data-centre-in-a-box would have many, many advantages.


> 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  
> 


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