On 03/22/2012 11:04 AM, Mark Hahn wrote: >> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/20/google_greywater_data_center_cooling/ > I grew up in a city cooled by a central evaporative water-chilling plant, > so I'm always surprised how unusual this sort of project is. > > does anyone have comments on how to enable/encourage/foster less > conventional datacenter engineering? > > I've participated in two DC projects, and both went with safe, boring > and inefficient solutions, simply because power costs weren't high enough > to motivate any deviation from utter conventionality. power costs are > somewhat hidden on uni campuses, and people involved are very, extremely, > hyper-risk-averse... > > I suppose part of the problem is in retrofitting a green DC into > existing buildings - it's a lot easier if you can plan a new building > to, for instance, take advantage of waste heat. >
I think you need to get the bean-counters involved, and sell them on the money savings, not just the planet savings. Princeton University just completed contruction of their High-Performance Computing Research Center (HPCRC. The name is a complete misnomer - its a production datacenter that houses ALL university computing, not just HPC, and it's not a research center). It's a pretty amazing building, and is shooting for some level of LEED certification. To me, the place looks like an over-engineered monster (I've toured it several times), but the engineers giving the tours always point out many different ways the datacenter is both saving the planet and saving the university a lot of money at the same time. They've done an amazing job with it, and I think that the end of the day, the monetary savings is what made it happen. http://www.princeton.edu/facilities/info/major_projects/HPCRC/ I know there are some lurkers from PU on this list who are involved with the HPCRC. Maybe they'll pipe up on this topic. -- Prentice _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, [email protected] sponsored by Penguin Computing To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
