[LINK] Greening ICT

[Richard Chirgwin]

Tom Worthington wrote:
> At 04:02 PM 10/02/2009, Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote:
>   
>> ... How much of the data centre space is needed for humans?
>>     
>
> Very little. Apart from the space needed for technicians to move 
> between the racks of equipment, there is only space needed for 
> offices for perhaps a dozen staff at a large centre.
>   
I'm not so sure it's "very little". Each rack needs front and
(preferably) rear access, and that access has to be usable. So for a
rack that's 1m deep, you probably need 1.5m of clear floor space in
front (so that you can wrangle a unit designed to fit in a 1m rack), and
I guess 600mm behind so people can maneuver for power cabling. Or if you
make the racks moveable to eliminate rear space, you need around 2m in
front. So in floor space terms, wriggle room probably takes up more than
equipment. In this, a data centre is very much like a phone exchange.
You only need a few people, but those people need to get at every part
of the equipment.
> There is no need for anyone, apart from the technicians who install 
> and maintain the equipment, to be on the premises at a data centre. 
> In particular there is no need for programmers to be at the data 
> centre or to be told it its location. There should be no guided tours 
> and no VIP visitors. In several decades of working in computing I 
> have only been into data centers about half a dozen times and none of 
> those visits were necessary.
>   
Here, I agree. The dc doesn't need to house a large staff as well as the
equipment itself.
> An example of what not to do is the Global Switch data centre in the 
> Old Government Printing office in Sydney. This multistory data centre 
> takes up valuable real estate in central Sydney 
> <http://www.globalswitch.com/locations/sydney.en.html>. This makes 
> little sense as the servers do not have to commute to work and do not 
> appreciate the excellent harbor views through the windows.
>   
But it makes sense in terms of a business model, because real estate is
an appreciating asset, whereas equipment is a depreciating one. When CBD
real estate was going through fast appreciation, the choice of location
was based only making it easier to get debt funding, and presenting a
nice balance sheet to investors.

But it's also worth remembering that there are two other considerations
in locating a centre like Global Switch. It connects to six carriers'
fibre - obviously Telstra, Optus and AAPT, the others I don't know from
memory but could be chosen from Uecomm, Verizon, iPrimus, Pipe and
Nextgen. A non-CBD location would not have so many carriers to bring in
fibre.

The other consideration is the ability to multi-home the incoming power.
I don't know how many incoming feeds GS has, but it's definitely >1.

Cheers,
RC
>
>
> 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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