CIT 470: Advanced Network and

System Administration
Data Centers

CIT 470: Advanced Network and System Administration Slide #1

Topics
Data Center: A facility for housing a large
amount of computer or communications
equipment.

1. Racks
2. Power
3. PUE
4. Cooling
5. Containers
6. Economics

Google DC in The Dalles

Located near 3.1GW hydroelectric power station on Columbia River

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 Google DC in The Dalles

Inside a Data Center

Inside a Container Data Center

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 Data Center is composed of:
• A physically safe and secure space
• Racks that hold computer, network, and
storage devices
• Electric power sufficient to operate the
installed devices
• Cooling to keep the devices within their
operating temperature ranges
• Network connectivity throughout the data
center and to places beyond

Data Center Components

Data Center Tiers

See http://uptimeinstitute.org/ for more details about tiers.

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 Racks: The Skeleton of the DC
• 19” rack standard
– EIA-310D
– Other standard numbers.
• NEBS 21” racks
– Telecom equipment.
• 2-post or 4-post
• Air circulation (fans)
• Cable management
• Doors or open

Rack Units

Rack Sizes

http://www.gtweb.net/rackframe.html

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 Rack Purposes
Organize equipment
– Increase density with vertical stacking.
Cooling
– Internal airflow in rack cools servers.
– Data center airflow determined by
arrangement of racks.
Wiring Organization
– Cable guides keep cables within racks.

Rack Power Infrastructure

• Different power
sockets can be on
different circuits.
• Individual outlet
control (power cycle.)
• Current monitoring
and alarms.
• Network managed
(web or SNMP.)

Rack-Mount Servers

1U

4U

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 Blade Servers

Buying a Rack
Buy the right size
– Space for servers.
– power, patch panels, etc.
Be sure it fits your servers.
– Appropriate mounting rails.
– Shelves for non-rack servers.
Environment options
– Locking front and back doors
– Sufficient power and cooling.
– Power/environment monitors.
– Console if needed.

Space
Aisles
Wide enough to move equipment.
Separate hot and cold aisles.
Hot spots
Result from poor air flow.
Servers can overheat when average
room temperature is too low.
Work space
A place for SAs to work on servers.
Desk space, tools, etc.
Capacity
Room to grow.

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 Data Center Power Distribution

http://www.42u.com/power/data-center-
power.htm

UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply)

Provides emergency power when utility fails
– Most use batteries to store power
Conditions power, removing voltage spikes

Standby UPS
• Power will be briefly interrupted during switch
• Computers may lockup/reboot during interruption
• No power conditioning
• Short battery life
• Very inexpensive

http://myuninterruptiblepowersupply.com/toplogy.htm

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 Online UPS
• AC -> DC -> AC conversion design
• True uninterrupted power without switching
• Extremely good power conditioning
• Longer battery life
• Higher price

http://myuninterruptiblepowersupply.com/toplogy.htm

Power Distribution Unit (PDU)

Takes high voltage feed and divides into many
110/120 V circuits that feed servers.
– Similar to breaker panel in a house.

Estimating Per-Rack Power

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 The Power Problem
• 4-year power cost = server purchase price.
• Upgrades may have to wait for electricity.
• Power is a major data center cost
– $5.8 billion for server power in 2005.
– $3.5 billion for server cooling in 2005.
– $20.5 billion for purchasing hardware in 2005.

Measuring Power Efficiency

PUE is ratio of total building power to IT power;

efficiency of datacenter building infrastructure
SPUE is ratio of total server input to its useful
power, where useful power is power consumed by
CPU, DRAM, disk, motherboard, etc.
Excludes losses due to power supplies, fans, etc.
Computation efficiency depends on software and
workload and measures useful work done per watt

Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE)

PUE = Data center power / Computer power
– PUE=2 indicates that for each watt of power used
to power IT equipment, one watt used for HVAC,
power distribution, etc.
– Decreases towards 1 as DC is more efficient.
PUE variation
– Industry average > 2
– Microsoft = 1.22
– Google = 1.19

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 Data Center Energy Usage

Sources of Efficiency Losses

UPS
– 88-94% efficiency
– Less if lightly loaded
PDU voltage transformation
– .5% or less
Cables from PDU to racks
– 1-3% depending on distance and cable type
Computer Room Air Conditioning (CRAC)
– Delivery of cool air over long distances uses fan
power and increases air temperature

Cooling a Data Center

• Keep temperatures within 18-27 ◦C
• Cooling equipment rated in BTUs
– 1 Watt = 3412 BTUH
– BTUH = British Thermal Unit / Hour
• Keep humidity between 30-55%
– High = condensation
– Low = static shock
• Avoid hot/cold spots
– Can produce
condensation

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 Computer Room Air Conditioning
• Large scale, highly
reliable air
conditioning units
from companies like
Liebert.
• Cooling capacity
measured in tons.

Waterworks for Data Center

Estimating Heat Load

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 Hot-Cold Aisle Architecture
• Server air intake from cold aisles
• Server air exhaust into hot aisles
• Improve efficiency by reducing mixture of
hot/cold

Free Cooling
• Cooling towers dissipate
heat by evaporating water,
reducing or eliminating need
to run chillers
• Google Belgium DC uses
100% free cooling

Improving Cooling Efficiency

Air flow handling: Hot air exhausted by servers
does not mix with cold air, and path to cooling
coil is very short so little energy spent moving

Elevated cold aisle temperatures: Cold aisle of

containers kept at 27◦C rather than 18-20◦C.

Use of free cooling: In moderate climates, cooling

towers can eliminate majority of chiller runtime.

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 Server PUE (SPUE)
Primary sources of inefficiency
– Power Supply Unit (PSU) (70-75% efficiency)
– Voltage Regulator Modules (VRMs)
• Can lose more than 30% power in conversion losses
– Cooling fans
• Software can reduce fan RPM when not needed
SPUE ratios of 1.6-1.8 are common today

Power Supply Unit Efficiency

80 PLUS initiative to promote PSU efficiency
– 80+% efficiency at 20%, 50%, 100% of rated load
– Can be less than 80% efficient at idle power load
First 80 PLUS PSU shipped in 2005

Server Useful Power Consumption

Device Power Usage
Intel Xeon W5590 3.33 GHz Quad Core 130 W
Intel Xeon E5430 2.66 GHz Quad Core 80W
Intel Xeon E5502 2.13 GHz Dual Core 80W
7200RPM Hard Drive 7W
10,000RPM Hard Drive 14W
15,000RPM Hard Drive 20W
DDR2 DIMM 1.65W
Video Card 20-120W

The best method to determine power usage is to measure it

https://www.wattsupmeters.com/

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 Server Utilization ~10-50%
It is surprisingly hard
to achieve high levels
“The Case for of utilization of typical
Energy-Proportional servers (and your home
Computing,” PC is even worse)
Luiz André Barroso,
Urs Hölzle,
IEEE Computer,
December 2007

Figure 1. Average CPU utilization of more than 5,000 servers during a six-month period. Servers
are rarely completely idle and seldom operate near their maximum utilization, instead operating
most of the time at between 10 and 50 percent of their maximum

Server Power Usage Range: 50-100%

“The Case for
Energy-Proportional
Computing,”
Luiz André Barroso,
Urs Hölzle,
IEEE Computer,
December 2007 Energy efficiency =
Utilization/Power

Figure 2. Server power usage and energy efficiency at varying utilization levels, from idle to
peak performance. Even an energy-efficient server still consumes about half its full power
when doing virtually no work.

Server Utilization vs. Latency

Latency

Utilization 100%

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 Improving Power Efficiency

Improving Power Efficiency

Application consolidation
– Reduce the number of applications by eliminating
old applications in favor of new ones that can server
the purpose of multiple old ones.
– Allows elimination of old app servers.
Server consolidation
– Use single DB for multiple applications.
– Move light services like NTP onto shared boxes.
Use SAN storage
– Local disks typically highly underused
– Use SAN so servers share single storage pool

Improving Power Efficiency

Virtualization
– Host services on VMs instead of on physical servers
– Host multiple virtual servers on single physical svr
Only-as-needed Servers
– Power down servers when not in use
– Works best with cloud computing
Granular capacity planning
– Measure computing needs carefully
– Buy minimal CPU, RAM, disk configuration based on
your capacity measurements and forecasts

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 Containers
Data Center in a
shipping container.
– 4-10X normal data
center density.
– 1000s of servers.
– 100s of kW of power.
Advantages
– Efficient cooling
– High server density
– Rapid deployment
– Scalability

Vendor offerings: http://www.datacentermap.com/blog/datacenter-container-55.html

Microsoft Chicago Data Center

Google Container Patents

Containers docked at central power spline

Vertical stack Container air flow diagram, with a center

of containers cold aisle and hot air return behind servers

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 Data Center Failure Events

Hardware Isn’t Reliable Enough

If servers are 99% reliable, then
a system with 10 servers is 0.9910 ≈ 90% reliable
a system with 100 servers is 0.99100 ≈ 37% reliable
0.99^n
1

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0
1 11 21 31 41 51 61 71 81 91

Fault-Tolerant Architecture
Must use fault-tolerant software architecture
– Hardware must detect faults
– Hardware must notify software in timely fashion
Fault-tolerant architecture reduces costs
– Choose hardware reliability level that maximizes
cost efficiency, not just reliability
Fault-tolerant architecture can improve perf
– Spreading processing and storage across many
servers improves bandwidth and CPU capacity

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 Causes of Service Disruptions

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

TCO = Data Center Depreciation
+ Data Center Operating Expenses (Opex)
+ Server Depreciation
+ Server Operating Expenses (Opex)
Depreciation is the process of allocating cost of
assets across period during which assets are used.

Example: server cost = $10,000, $0 residual value

annual depreciation over 4 years = $2500

Cost to Build Data Center

• Primary components (power, cooling, space) scale roughly linearly
with space.
• 80% of total construction cost goes to power + cooling
• Typical depreciation periods of 10-15 years

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 Operational Costs
Operational costs include
– Electricity
– Salaries for personnel
– Server maintenance contracts
– Software licenses
Larger data centers are cheaper
– Smaller number of sysadmins per server
– Fixed number of security guards
For multi-MW data center, $0.02-$0.08/month

Case Study
Tier 3 multi-MW data center
– Dell 2950 III EnergySmart servers (300W, $6000)
– Cost of electricity is 6.2₵/kW
– Servers financed with 3-year loan @ 12%
– Cost of DC construction is $15/W, 12-yr lifetime
– DC opex is 4₵/month
– PUE = 2.0
– Server lifetime is 3 years
– Server maintenance is 5% of capex
– Server avg power = 75% peak

Key Points
Data center components
– Physically secure space
– Racks, the DC skeleton
– Power, including UPS and PDU
– Cooling
– Networking
Power efficiency (server cost = 4 years power on avg)
– PUE = Data center power / IT equipment power
– Most power in traditional DC goes to cooling, UPS
– SPUE = Server PUE; inefficiencies from PSU, VRM, fans
Cooling
– Heat load estimation
– Air flow control (hot/cold aisle architecture or containers)
– Higher cold air temperatures (27C vs. 20C)
– Free cooling (cooling towers)
TCO = DC depr + DC opex + Svr depr + Svr opex

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 References
1. Luiz Andre Barroso and Urs Holzle, The Case for Energy-
Proportional Computing, IEEE Computer, Vol 40, Issue 12,
December 2007.
2. Luiz Andre Barroso and Urs Holzle, The Datacenter as a
Computer: An Introduction to the Design of Warehouse-Scale
Machines, 1st edition, Morgan and Claypool Publishers
3. Xiaobo Fan, Wolf-Dietrich Weber, Luiz Andre Barroso, Power
provisioning for a warehouse-sized computer, ISCA '07:
Proceedings of the 34th annual international symposium on
Computer architecture
4. Thomas A. Limoncelli, Christina J. Hogan, and Strata R.
Chalup, The Practice of System and Network Administration,
Second Edition, Addison-Wesley Professional, 2007.
5. Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder, Trent R. Hein, Ben Whaley, UNIX
and Linux System Administration Handbook, 4th edition,
Prentice Hall, 2010.

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