Data Center Energy Efficiency Technologies and …

1 data Center Energy Efficiency Technologies and methodologies A Review of Commercial Technologies and Recommendations for Application to Department of Defense Systems Performed at the request of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering s Reliance 21 Energy & Power Community of Interest Alexander D. Schlichting, November 2015 M T R 1 5 0 4 4 8 M I T R E T E C H N I C A L R E P ORT Sponsor: OSD Dept. No.: J82A Contract No.: W15P7T-13-C-A802 Project No.: 0715D190EP The views, opinions, and/or findings contained in this report are those of the authors and should not be construed as an official Government position, policy, or decision, unless designated by other documentation.

2 This technical data was produced for the Government under Basic Control No. W15P7T-13-C-A802, and is subject to the Rights in Technical data -Noncommercial Items clause at DFARS (FEB 2012). Approved for Public Release; Distribution Unlimited. Case Number 15-3845 2016 The MITRE Corporation. All rights reserved. McLean, VA Approved By 11/17/15 Kurt Eisenbeiser, Date Principal Power & Energy Systems Engineer Task Leader for the data Center Energy Efficiency Technologies and methodologies Review iii This page intentionally left blank.

3 Iv Executive Summary Although data centers (DC) are most often associated with warehouses filled with rack upon rack of servers owned and operated by large information technology (IT) companies, the Department of Defense (DoD) has a significant number of DCs themselves. While the DoD initiated a consolidation effort in 2010, there is still plenty of opportunity to improve the Energy Efficiency of their DCs to increase their cost effectiveness and resiliency. The goal of this study is to examine the Technologies and related technology management methodologies commercial companies, hereafter referred to collectively as Industry, use to improve the Energy Efficiency of their DCs and identify the most promising ones that DoD DC operators could leverage.

4 The study concludes with a set of key overall findings and a number of DoD-specific recommendations. Key to understanding the DoD-specific recommendations are the unique DoD applications and requirements for their DCs. For the purposes of this study, the definition of a DC is extended beyond warehouses filled with hundreds of racks to any computing capability for local or remote use beyond those provided by a stand-alone desktop or hand held computing device. This introduces into the discussion a large number of mobile, tactical command, control, communications, and computer (C4) systems across the Services.

5 A couple of examples are mobile command posts mounted on the back of an M1152 HMMWV, airborne surveillance and targeting platforms such as the E-8C JSTARS, and the combat direction Center on an aircraft carrier. All of these platforms present unique challenges related to the integration of significant IT capabilities, and their operational effectiveness would benefit greatly from the IT system, or DC, being Energy efficient. The other major DoD-unique requirements, used to inform this study s recommendations, relate to information security and access control.

6 The overall Federal Government uses the FedRAMP certification program to ensure a minimum level of information security for Government DCs, and the DoD has leveraged this certification with its enhanced FedRAMP+ program. There are also additional information security requirements for different types of information as summarized by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) DoD Cloud Computing Security Requirements Guide. Highly sensitive and collateral information requires additional access control and physical security on top of the FedRAMP+ requirements.

7 DoD DCs can still make use of some of the Industry s Technologies despite this combination of unique DC platforms and increased security requirements. DOD DCs also often present opportunities not present in the commercial realm. A typical DC has the same major components no matter its application or size. The actual IT systems go beyond the IT computing systems, or servers. data storage drives, networking equipment, and data switches are all considered part of the IT systems. The electrical power and cooling equipment is often collectively referred to as the DC physical infrastructure (DCPI).

8 This term encompasses on-site backup generators, switchgear, uninterruptible power supplies (UPS), power distribution units (PDU), power cables, computer room air conditioners and handlers (CRAC/CRAH), chillers, direct expansion (DX) units, and even cooling towers. There are also a slew of additional miscellaneous components to a DC that need to be considered during its design: lighting, raised floors, exhaust plenums, and even the DC operators themselves. The Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) is the typical Industry metric for determining the Energy Efficiency of a DC.

9 It simplifies down to a ratio of the total amount of electrical Energy consumed by the DC over the amount of Energy consumed by the IT equipment alone. A value of 2 means that for every Watt dedicated to performing computations an additional Watt is required for the operation of the DCPI. An ideal DC would have a PUE of 1, where all of the v electrical Energy is used for computations. This metric, however, focuses on the Efficiency of the DCPI and assumes that the power consumed by the IT equipment is a constant amount that cannot be lowered. This is misleading because IT equipment has become more efficient over the past decade.

10 The EPA has developed Energy STAR certifications for many different types of IT equipment used in DCs, and purchasing certified equipment when available is one way of improving DC Energy Efficiency not captured in the PUE metric. The Technologies found during this review separate into three main categories: management methodologies , low-capital Technologies , and high-capital Technologies . In this report, an emphasis is placed on the management methodologies and low-capital Technologies as they represent the paths of least resistance toward implementing more Energy efficient DoD DCs.