While interest in building “green” data centers rises, the computing industry forges ahead with sexy new technologies to conserve power and minimize the emissions of greenhouse gasses. New ways to process and store ever more data with less power, increasingly compact and efficient servers, and IT resource optimization solutions are very hot right now for companies wishing to do more computing with less energy.
Sometimes, however, we forget that one of the biggest uses of energy in a data center involves cooling: keeping IT rooms air-conditioned to the cold temperatures the equipment requires in order to work properly and avoid over-heating. Air conditioning, obviously, is an incredibly energy-intensive process, and keeping server rooms as cold as they need to be often requires even more tangential energy use: extra heat for the work areas that abut the data centers so your employees in the accounting department next door, for example, don't freeze to death.
But cooling is one of those things that can be attained naturally, without the need for air-conditioning. How? By locating data centers in cold places with an abundance of free, cold outside air.
According to UK newspaper the Telegraph, Facebook (News - Alert) plans to build a new server farm that will need very little in artificial air-conditioning. The social networking giant reportedly plans to build three giant server halls covering an area the size of 11 football fields, says the Telegraph, in northern Sweden, not far from the Arctic Circle. The facilities will be located in Luleå, which is at the northern tip of the Baltic Sea and only 62 miles south of the Arctic Circle.
"The climate will allow them to just use only air for cooling the servers," said Mats Engman, chief executive of the Aurorum Science Park, an organization that hopes to attract a more companies with powerful data center needs and an eye toward keeping them “green.”
“If you take the statistics, the temperature has not been above 30C [about 86F] for more than 24 hours since 1961. If you take the average temperature, it's around 2C [35.6F],” said Engman.
Of course, since the region does not stay at refrigeration temperatures year-round, Facebook will still need to buy some energy off the grid. In its location in Northern Sweden, however, the data center park will be able to buy the energy it needs for supplemental cooling from renewable electricity generated by dams on the nearby Luleå river, reports the Telegraph.
While this will enable Facebook to lower its eco-footprint as an entire organization, the new facility's workers will probably be the first of the social networking company's employees to be at risk of polar bear attacks on their way to work.
Tracey Schelmetic is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Tracey's articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by
Rich Steeves
