Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Example
Using the data of the kind in
Figure 6.18
,
what is the saving in power going
from five servers at 10% utilization versus one server at 50% utilization?
Answer
A single server at 10% load is 308 wats and at 50% load is 451 wats. The savings
is then
or about a factor of 3.4. If we want to be good environmental stewards in our
WSC, we must consolidate servers when utilizations drop, purchase servers
that are more energy proportional, or find something else that is useful to run
in periods of low activity.
Given the background from these six sections, we are now ready to appreciate the work of
the Google WSC architects.
6.7 Putting It All Together: A Google Warehouse-Scale
Computer
Since many companies with WSCs are competing vigorously in the marketplace, up until re-
cently, they have been reluctant to share their latest innovations with the public (and each oth-
er). In 2009, Google described a state-of-the-art WSC as of 2005. Google graciously provided
an update of the 2007 status of their WSC, making this section the most up-to-date description
of a Google WSC [
Clidaras, Johnson, and Felderman 2010
]. Even more recently, Facebook de-
cribed their latest datacenter as part of
htp://opencompute.org
.
Containers
Both Google and Microsoft have built WSCs using shipping containers. The idea of building
a WSC from containers is to make WSC design modular. Each container is independent, and
the only external connections are networking, power, and water. The containers in turn sup-
ply networking, power, and cooling to the servers placed inside them, so the job of the WSC
is to supply networking, power, and cold water to the containers and to pump the resulting
warm water to external cooling towers and chillers.
The Google WSC that we are looking at contains 45 40-foot-long containers in a 300-foot by
250-foot space, or 75,000 square feet (about 7000 square meters). To it in the warehouse, 30 of
the containers are stacked two high, or 15 pairs of stacked containers. Although the location
was not revealed, it was built at the time that Google developed WSCs in The Dalles, Oregon,
which provides a moderate climate and is near cheap hydroelectric power and Internet back-
bone iber. This WSC ofers 10 megawats with a PUE of 1.23 over the prior 12 months. Of that
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