Data Centers are a hot topic these days.  No matter where you look, this once obscure aspect of infrastructure is getting a lot of attention.  For years, there have been cost pressures on IT operations and this, when the need for modern capacity is greater than ever, has thrust data centers into the spotlight.

Server and rack density continues to rise, placing DC professionals and businesses in tighter and tougher situations while they struggle to manage their IT environments.  And now hyper-scale cloud infrastructure is taking traditional technologies to limits never explored before and focusing the imagination of the IT industry on new possibilities.

Microsoft, has focused a lot of thought and research around how to best operate and maintain their global infrastructure.  They believe it is one of the most revolutionary changes to happen to data centers in the last 30 years.

Generation 4 modular data centers will take the flexibility of containerized servers—like those in Microsoft’s Chicago data center—and apply it across the entire facility.

So what is modular?  Think of it like “building blocks”, where the data center will be composed of modular units of prefabricated mechanical, electrical, security components, etc., in addition to containerized servers. 

Was there a key driver for the Generation 4 Data Center?  If you were to summarize the Gen 4 design into a single sentence it would be something like this: “A highly modular, scalable, efficient, just-in-time data center capacity program that can be delivered anywhere in the world very quickly and cheaply, while allowing for continued growth as required.”

Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?  Well, keep in mind that these concepts have been in initial development and prototyping for over a year and are based on cumulative knowledge of previous facility generations and the advances we have made since we began our investments in earnest on this new design.

One of the biggest challenges at Microsoft is the ‘Goldilock’s Problem’. The worst thing you can do in delivering facilities for the business is not have enough capacity online, thus limiting the growth of products and services.  The second worst thing you can do in delivering facilities for the business is to have too much capacity online.  This has led to a focus on smart, intelligent growth for the business — refining our overall demand picture.  The capital dollars of investment are too large to make without long term planning.

As Microsoft struggled to master these interesting challenges, they had to ensure that their technological plan also included solutions for the business and operational challenges we faced as well.

From a configuration, construct-ability and time to market perspective, the primary goals and objectives are to modularize the whole data center.  This means using the same kind of parts in pre-manufactured modules, the ability to use containers, skids, or rack-based deployments and the ability to tailor the Redundancy and Reliability requirements to the application at a very specific level.

Some applications can run with N-level redundancy in the infrastructure, others require a little more infrastructure for support. Understanding this concept will allow datacenters to reduce capital costs by 20%-40% or greater depending upon class.

For example, non-critical or geo redundant applications have low hardware reliability requirements on a location basis.  Applications that demand higher level of redundancy or temperature control will use configurations of Gen 4 to meet those needs, however, they will also cost more (but still less than traditional data centers).

Since the entire platform requires pre-manufacture of its core components, on-site construction costs are lowered.  From a total energy perspective not only will we have remarkable PUE values, but the total cost of energy going into the facility will be greatly reduced as well.

More than that, Microsoft is on a mission to reduce the overall amount of copper and water used in these facilities.  They have talked openly and publicly about building chiller-less data centers and running their facilities using aggressive outside economization.

For example, all modules in Gen 4 will have common interfaces clearly defined by our specs and any vendor that meets these specifications will be able to plug into our infrastructure. 

These facilities are considered two leading industry examples, based on their energy efficiency and ability to run and operate at new levels of scale and performance by leveraging clean hydro power (Quincy) and recycled waste water (San Antonio) to cool the facility during peak cooling months.

The key concepts for the Gen 3 design are increased modularity and greater concentration around energy efficiency and scale.  The Gen 3 facility will be best represented by the Chicago, Illinois facility currently under construction.  This facility will seem very foreign compared to the traditional data center concepts most of the industry is comfortable with.  In fact, if you ever sit around in our container hanger in Chicago it will look incredibly different from a traditional raised-floor data center.

Microsoft anticipates this modularization will drive huge efficiencies in terms of cost and operations for our business.  This will also introduce significant changes in the environmental systems used to run their facilities.  These concepts and processes (where applicable) will help gain even greater efficiencies in the existing footprint, allowing us to further maximize infrastructure investments.

This is definitely a journey, not a destination industry.  In fact, the Generation 4 design has been under heavy engineering for viability and cost for over a year.

While the demand of our commercial growth required Microsoft to make investments as we grew, they treated each step in the learning as a process for further innovation in data centers.

 

 

Tags: Energy conservation, Microsoft

This entry was posted on Friday, December 12th, 2008 at 10:27 am and is filed under Future of Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.