Boden - The Arctic Circle

Last Jan/Feb I spent some time in Boden, Lulea, Sweden to visit the Boden One Data Centre, this is an EU funded project and you can find out all about the project here, as well as the RI:SE data centre laboratories, you can find out about them here.

I'm giving a presentation at Data Center Forum in Stockholm later this week, more info here , so thought it was time I got around to posting this article which has been 10 months in preparation!

This next section was written upon my return from the coldest place I'd even been to, it was minus 37, yes you read that correctly -37, which is to be expected when you're about 100yds inside the Arctic Circle!

Boden One DC

Before I write about my impressions of the Boden One DC I have to present some background, essentially, "The ultimate goal for the project Boden Type DC One is to build the prototype of the most energy and cost efficient data centre in the world in Boden, Sweden."

The project seeks to be "Resource efficient throughout its lifecycle" and goes on to state that
"Data centres consist of two distinct elements; IT-equipment and the surrounding service envelope. The innovation of Boden Type DC One is a new, holistic design approach for the latter. The goal is to bring a novel combination of existing techniques and locations to the market. This combination does not exist and has never been tested.

The unique solution offers a sustainable datacentre building which is energy and resource efficient throughout its lifecycle, cheaper to build and operate and brings jobs and knowledge to remote places in large parts of Europe. The cornerstones of the concept Boden Type DC One are:

• Efficient fresh air cooling.
• Modular building design.
• Renewable energy.
• Favourable location.

The 600kW prototype facility will be a living lab and demonstration site, as it will be tested by providers and end-users in a real operation environment with all aspects of its operations measured. With the prototype, the project stakeholders will be able to:

• Validate that the datacenter concept meets the energy efficiency, financial reliability, and other targets in real operational environments.
• Validate and improve the design software tools for modeling and simulating the operation of the facility and cooling equipment.
• Demonstrate through accurate simulation that the prototype can be replicated in other European sites with less favourable conditions.

The name Boden Type Data Centre One is naturally created for the first Type DC in the location of Boden, in the north of Sweden. Close to the clean and high quality electricity supply by renewable energy source, ideal climate and service infrastructure."

These are laudable aspirations and goals and well in keeping with Carbon3IT's own view on data centres for the future.

However, and this is not a criticsm, more of an observation, there is no reference to existing data centre design and build standards, nor has any classification in terms of an Uptime Institute Tier or EN50600 Class been applied to the site. In my opinion, and contrary views are welcome, at best this site and current infrastructure would be classed as a Tier 1/Class 1 facility, but it is none the poorer for being classed as such, it is after all a research project.

 So, when I visited, this EU funded project was still a work in progress, the building is 98% complete, and was undergoing some final AC commissioning during my visit, and only 1 of the 3 pods has any active IT equipment installed. The configuration is 3 pods which will be fitted with an OCP stack (this is the active pod), a HPC cluster and finally a blockchain (cryptocurrency) mining operation.

It does not have a UPS nor a generator, but there is space for a UPS within the power room and the use of a generator is a moot point when you have a hydropower station and biogas plant literally meters away, the connection to the biogas plant is still under discussion, and information on the hydro power station can be found here.
It should also be noted that the site is also literally meters away from https://www.hydro66.com/

The DC used 100% free cooling, there is a cold air corridor which feeds ambient air into the eco-cooling equipmnent which is then (depending on season) tempered with hot return air in winter to provide a range of inlet temperatures for the IT equipment or in summer passed straight through to the IT equipment with the hot air being vented out to a vaulted roof and then outside.

This next section was written today (24/11/2019) and the site is now fully operational and generating some "sweet" data which you can view here, the current PUE is here on the top left of the page (the reason why I posted the link is because this is live real time data and I didn't want to "date" this post.

This is very impressive, however it has be tempered with the fact that this is an unmanned test facility with some of the latest equipment that has been heavily optimised by the research team and as stated earlier would be classed under both the UTI Tier Topology and EN50600 Classification as a Tier/Class 1 site.

Yes, it is clearly a VERY energy efficient site, in terms of the ratio of total energy consumption against IT energy consumption being around the low 1.007 PUE mark.

So, some observations, the cold aisle temperatures in Pod 1 & 3 appear to be below ASHRAE reccommended at around 13.2 degrees in Pod 1, the OCP pod and 13.6 in Pod 3, the ASICs Pod, I'll make a mental note to ask the RI:SE team in Stockholm late this week to find out why this is the case, but it raises an interesting question about supply temperatures.

It is interesting that there is no UPS or Generator, could, or would a commercial DC operator consider this? I doubt it, although the prudent application of the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency) best practices applied to an organisation in relation to the "actual" mission critical IT functions via BP 4.3.x may yield an interesting view?

At best, the Boden One is a "hyper-edge" facility and could be deployed to link "edge" sites in a hub/spoke configuration.

My conclusion is that research has to be done, and the mission parameters are laudable:

Efficient fresh air cooling. Modular building design. Renewable energy.Favourable location.

However, DCs cannot always take advantage of fresh air cooling, on-site or local renewable energy or favourable locations and I'm sure that many in the community will be dismissive of the project and its results stating that its not real world, that is missing the point.

If we strip out some of the historical retoric out of DC design and educate users, we could build DCs using this research and build them cheaply, using less energy and save time deploying compute to remote locations, if we have to give up some uptime and resilience, is this necessarily a bad thing?

I'll be available at the Data Center Forum on the 28th November in Stockholm to defend my corner, I'll look forward to some robust discussions.

7th December 2019 - Update
FANTASTIC News from the recent DCD Global Awards held in London on the 5th December, Boden won an award the... 

Nonprofit Industry Initiative of the Year

Winner: Boden Type DC
In collaboration with EcoCooling, H1 Systems, RISE & Boden Agency
This award is about recognizing the great initiatives to educate and influence the data center sector that NGOs, professional bodies and academia put together.
Funded by the European Horizon 2020 project, this prototype 500kW facility in the small town of Boden uses every trick in the book to lower its environmental impact: it runs on renewable energy and doesn't have batteries or gensets.
Category sponsor: DCD

Well Done!





 

Carbon3IT Ltd 2018 Update

I'll start by stating that this has been a very diverse year in terms of sales, we appear to have broken new ground in various ways and our income streams have essentially quadrupled and financially this year has been marginally better than last year, and we have a number of projects already booked for 2019 but these are essentially restricted to Q1 and we (and it seems the Government and 100% of UK inhabitants) have no real clue as to what will happen after the 29th March 2019 (Brexit Day).

At the time of writing this article, Parliament is in recess for Christmas, and no real progress has been made at all, the EU Withdrawal Agreement that T May has come back with, has no prospect of making it through the house, so all the talk is "my deal, no deal or no brexit" we'd prefer "no brexit" but there are some who wish to jump out of the UK aeroplane without a parachute, thank you but we'd rather not.
I'm not going to gaze into my crystal ball at this time, except to say that 2019 is going to be a VERY interesting year.

So, January 2018 saw us preparing for our final EURECA project sessions, attending kickstart.eu and presenting at the BroadGroup DataCloud event on the topic of energy aand energy efficiency, as you'd expect the EUCOC featured heavily as did some of the UK energy legislation, standards and thoughts for the future. We were quite busy at this time preparing some BRIGHTTALK seminars to support our final EURECA sessions. We also had a conversation with some chaps at Building Research Establishment (BRE) but more on that later.

February saw the final EURECA session and it was a bumper event, we had a day at the UEL for around 75 delegates, and then attended the Data Centre Summit where we had a number of presentations scheduled, finally rounded off with a series of webinars and an event at the Houses of Parliament. We also manged to fit in a number of client meetings, the first to discuss the use of our services for a large global data centre supply chain supplier, the second to discuss a project in North Africa, the third to review some EUCOC updates for a large global telco/colo provider. We also found the time to visit the HoP for a policy connect launch meeting for sustainable ICT inlcuding data centres for which we and EURECA had provided some content.

March was an intersting month, we met up with our good friends at Ekkosense to discuss items of  mutual interest (air flow in data centres mainly), we attended the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell show at the NEC, mainly to ascertain whether the technology could be used for data centre (yes, they can but it requires a major rethink and redesign of the data centre!) The month was rounded off by our annual visit to Data Centre World, my thoughts on this are that I remember it being very very cold! We also went to Amsterdam for an ICTFootprint event were we spoke on the topic of Green IT and also Sustainable Data Centres, we also undertook a datacentre audit for a midlands university

April was a fairly quiet month due to Easter but we did have some EUCOC work and some work via our Dutch partners Green IT Amsterdam.

Early May, was the Data Centres North event, and we managed to fit 2 trips into the Netherlands (the 3rd and 4th this year"), the first, to provide some basic data centre foundation training to another Dutch partner Asperitas, and the second to meet up with a Green IT Amsterdam client to develop their Green Data Centre Campus Sustainability Framework, we also attended the Data Centre Solutions Awards and a couple of webinars on the emerging Data Centre EMAS criteria where we provided some content and discussion.

We love June, it might be because we get to go to Monaco for the DataCloud Europe event, as usual we were invited as the guest of the EU-JRC and partly funded by our friends at the DCA. We love it because the weather improves and it tends to get hot, this year was no exception it got really hot and for a long time. We also presented to a selected audience for ABB on the topic of "The EUCOC and other animals (I may have been watching too much "The Durells" in the previous couple of weeks whilst building the presentation), we also attended the BICSI and MIXingIT event as well as England first WC game (thank you Keysource!)

In July, we made our way to Manchester for the Data Centre Transformation conference (and another England WC game), attended the datacentre.me networking event and the launch of Interxion's London 3 facility at the London Assembly/Mayors Office, that was a very good night, the view is magnificent,  the Tower of London, Tower Bridge, and all the city laid out in front of you, the weather was so good that you could see for miles!. The next week saw me in Brussels to visit a new client to prepare 3 EUCOC applications,  Later that week it was also a family event, a christening that co-incided with the school holidays so we went up to Manchester, stayed the night, and met up with 2 clients the following  day. We also managed a trip to Cambridge to visit another potential partner/client and the girls enjoyed the city (again it was very hot!)

August is always very quiet, but not this year! We had a meeting with a Landlord for a very interesting data centre site very close to us, in fact it is the closest and I've been dying to get in there and mooch around, it appeared that my wish was about to come true! We also visited a client in London at their Class 2 facility (sadly no business from them!) We rounded the month off by providing some training to BRE personnel (the result of that phone call in January and a meeting with them at DCW in March (thats how long our sales cycle can be!)) that itself was topped off by a visit to a Data Centre (We went to Interxion's London site). I've always felt that data centre training is too one sided but thats not a topic for discussion now, but rest assured that plans are afoot!

In September I was back in Amsterdam for a brief visit to attend the launch of the Catalyst project with our partner Green IT Amsterdam, this project is seeking to promote the reuse of data centre waste heat for other purposes, such as district heat systems and the like, its going to be a very interesting project and we are assisting them. We then flew to Helsinki for a CEEDA assessment, this assessment was a "Design Operate CEEDA" and we were reviewing the operational elements, I can state that this was an exceptional facility and well worth its Gold accreditation.
We also found the time to attend the DCA golf day where once again we managed to just miss the "worst golfer" prize.
Later, in the month we visited Leeds with a client and their client and then attended the DCA Annual Members meeting coupled with a couple of steering group meetings namely the "energy efficiency" and new "liquid alliance"

We always tend to schedule the EUCOC Annual Best Practices meeting around this time of year, and this year it was scheduled for early October, this was follwed by a visit to London for IP expo and then a trip to Bristol to meet up with the Council to discuss their "Energy Leap" project. We also visited the data centre closest to me to conduct the audit on behalf of the landlord, my dream had come true! Its always good to visit data centres and check out the technology and management systems in use, but this was a joy to behold, the site was built when I was 11 years old, (I'm 54 now, but feel 24!) and I have to say that for its age, it was in exceptional condition, true it did look a bit tired but hey, this girl had been working her socks off 24/7/365 for over 40 years, hopefully she'll get a make over soon (watch this space!)

November is conference season, but we managed to fit in a CEEDA assessment and an EUCOC preparation meeting with a new client as well as attend a few non standard (i.e. non data centre events) as well, the month started with the DCD Converged event at London's Old Billingsgate, and then I attended the Low Carbon Britain event. We then met up with a client with regard to assisting them with their proposed ISO50001 certification (we got the job, and are currently preparing draft documents for them to review and amend to suit their needs, later we'll check the policies, processes and procedures and review the evidence prior to the certification process, which we'll attend.
Later that week I travelled to Lincoln to visit an old client who has finally managed to get a site and is starting to build a very interesting data centre, more on that project next year!
The week after I made my way over to Dublin for Data Centres Ireland and then London for a CBRE briefing on Standards (a subject I know a little about!). We spent the rest of the month preparing and writing our report on the data centre audit we'd completed for our client in Warwick. We also managed to get tickets for the Networking Event of the Year, which is the DataCentre.ME Christmas Party, held on the Tattershall Castle, a boat moored between the House of Parliament and Hungerford Bridge, with excellent views of the London Eye and of course the River.

December is nearly always quite quiet, but not this year, we were invited to the Man Utd v Arsenal match at Old Trafford at the Captains Table, this is corporate hospitality at its finest, 3 course meal, drinks, programme, gift and a very good evenings entertainment (not on the football side of things unfortunately, although it was a 2-2 draw, the game wasn't that great!) followed by a quick trip to London to attend the DCD Awards. I love going to the DCD Awards, and this year was excellent, the EURECA project WON! the Initative of the Year award, so many thanks to the entire EURECA team for winning this very prestigious award, which has made and will continue to make data centres in the EU energy efficient and sustainable.
The next week I met with a potential new partner who is interested in heat recovery and reuse in the DC sector, this was followed by a small networking event run by the excellent Caroline Hitchens and her DataCentre.Me team. The day after I attended the BSI TCT7/3 standards committee meeting which of course develops the EN50600 series of data centre design, build and operate standards.
We had an update meeting with our ISO50001 client and then a couple of meetings in London to sort out some new work (potentially) for next year.

As I stated earlier, next year is going to be very interesting indeed and as we have no idea as how its all going to pan out, we're going to keep our powder dry for the time being.

But, that said, we will continue to offer the following services:

EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres Review and Preparation
CEEDA assessements (with our DCD partners)
ISO Management Systems for ISO9001/14001/22301/27001 and 50001
Data Centre Audits (with our M&E partners)
Data Centre Training (on site, and tailored to your requirements)
Data Centre Support Services - Compliance

Special Services, if you have a problem that needs solving, let us know, through our wide network of consultants, supply chains and operators we've probably come across the problem before and therefore may be able to help


Finally, we'd like to wish all our customers, suppliers and industry collegues the very best wishes for 2019

The next blog post will be the 4th in our series "Air v Liquid" and this article will be on the cost side of things scheduled to be published early in the new year.

As always, until next time.

If you need to get in touch with us, please use the following:

info@carbon3it.com
www.carbon3it.com
@carbon3it (Twitter/Skype)

2014 Year in review

Well, as its Christmas we get some time to chill out and relax, perhaps do some work or just sit and think about what comes next.

Before that though, I'd like to review this year as its been very exciting.

Back in Jan 14, we were requested to help out on a bid for a large UK based Telco to install cold aisle containment at 130+ sites, sadly after about a months work of work, the client decided to use its own in house team.

We were also frustrated by another potential client regarding the preparation of some management systems for ISO accreditation, we were a little too expensive, but our quotation included a lot of the work that wasn't included by the other parties, and would have to have been completed in house so all in all we were about right on the costing but headline costs in a competitive situation are key.

We spent two weeks in June cooped up in the UEL with the DCA and Green IT Amsterdam amongst others to prepare a bid for EU funding, which we found out in November has been accepted, so this project will commence in March 2015, more details closer to the launch date and project commencement.

I visited the US, well Texas actually in April to conduct a CEEDA assessment for ARM, Austin followed by two UK re-assessments for ARM Cambridge and St Andrews universities, both retaining their GOLD CEEDA's.
In November I was off to Sydney, Australia to undertake another re-assessment for Westpac and then a week later to visit Hong Kong to assess a data centre on behalf of one of the Utilities and their High Energy Efficiency pilot site.
Both of these have just been audited this week so I cannot reveal their award grades as yet, watch this space.

We've also been doing bits and pieces of work for ICEOTOPE, the liquid cooled server solution and we hope to do some more work next year.

So, next year, we'll be spending a lot of time on our EU project, still assessing data centres for CEEDA and the EUCOC and doing some ad-hoc work all based on energy efficiency for some other major clients.

As always we'll keep you up to date on this blog, our website and social media feeds.

Oh, almost forgot, we are in discussions with a few interested parties over a radical new project, this is close to being revealed, but not yet, not yet.

Last Week Update

Phew, really tired this weekend, had lots to do last week and even more to do next week.

So, last week, well our presentation to the Local Business Accelerators "dragon" panel went well.
I'm often surprised that the lack of understanding about the science behind climate change when I talk to people individually or when I conduct my Green IT talks and I've prepared the first part of any presentation I do, to provide some basic facts about the global warming trend, firstly I use Michael Mann's "hockey stick" and then the recent Berkeley Earth Suface Temperature study, we then speak about what could potentially happen, in effect sea level rise and weather patterns changing etc.
In the UK I also talk about the impending "energy gap", this is when our nuclear power stations shut down in 2023 and due to the large combustion plant directive, coal and oil powered power stations are restricted to 20k hours of production or the installation of Carbon Capture and Storage technologies. All in all, this represents the loss of some 32% of generative capacity in the next 12 years, and could cause some real problems with intermittent power, blackouts and maybe rationing for large users.

So, we presented to the LCA panel and we await the outcome.
Then, I attended the judging for the DCD awards as a judge and reviewed a number of projects that were seeking an award, more details can be found here http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/awards
The awards are next Thursday, and I've had to buy a evening suit and all the gubbings, it should be a great event and I'm looking forward to meeting up with lots of friends and colleagues.
Before, that though I'm off to conduct a CEEDA assessement in the North, and then have a meeting with a client.
Friday I'm intending to relax and wind down for Christmas, although I have a trip to London the following week.

Have a great week.