Next Generation Integrated Cloud Hosting Environment (NICHE)

Q1. The project will create a prototype data centre facility to support cloud computing
infrastructure which will demonstrate power usage effectiveness (PUE) significantly better
than current UK installations and in line with leading practice in the US. The PUE is the
industry-standard measure for data centre energy conversion efficiency and is the ratio of the
total power consumed by the facility to the active power consumed by the hosted computing
equipment (the difference between these two values being the power consumed by the cooling
equipment, power transformation losses, UPS losses and power factor losses) [Note 1]. A
traditionally operated data centre would have a PUE value of between 2 and 3 which
effectively doubles (or trebles) the amount of energy consumed in providing the primary,
active power necessary to run the computing equipment. Although new, state-of-the-art
facilities are improving PUE levels to between 1.6 and 1.8, this project aims to take a
“systems” approach to the reduction in data centre PUE and to create a prototype facility in
which the PUE will be less than 1.4. This development will potentially transform the cost
base for adopting a cloud model of IT services provision as typically 60% of the operational
costs for data centres are related to energy costs. It is estimated [Intellect Report 2009 “Data
Centres: The Backbone of the UK Economy”] that the demand for servers will grow at a rate
of 18% per annum through to 2020 and that the potential saving in the carbon footprint of data
centres would be 7Gt through the systematic improvement in the efficiency of energy
utilisation. The potential savings for the proposed 1.5MW capacity data centre facility in
reducing the PUE from 1.6 to 1.2 equate to 6million kilowatt hours, a reduction in CO2 of
3,000 tonnes and a financial saving of £0.5m. To date, much of the development work
undertaken to create “greener digital assets” has been carried out by technology vendors who
have worked in isolation in creating separate “solutions” for data centre operators. This will
be the first major integrated development project carried out by a UK data centre operator.
Cloud computing changes the focus of cost-of-ownership to a systems perspective in which
the integration of consumption-based computing resources, the heat transfer process and the
facility control and monitoring systems need to be synchronised and optimised. The project
has the potential to make a significant and widespread impact on the carbon footprint of ICT
infrastructure as the output from the work will effectively be made available to a whole range
of businesses who increasingly utilise ICT but who individually would not have the resources
to significantly improve the energy efficiency of their equipment hosting. Data centres are
responsible for around 3.3% of UK energy consumption and a development which aims to
reduce the carbon footprint by 30% has the potential for transformational supply chain impact.