Background: Inaugural 2008 Data Center Energy Efficiency Project

In 2008, the Leadership Group hosted its first Data Center Energy Efficiency (DCEE) Summit on Sun Microsystems’ Santa Clara campus. It was a major success. Over 300 energy managers and data center operators attended the Summit. They learned about the cost effective new technologies that significantly reduce energy consumption in data center operations. The results of 17 demonstration projects, which featured over 11 new technologies, were released at the Summit.

• About the 2008 Summit
• Participants
• Particpant List
• Accenture's Role

About the 2008 Summit

The 2008 Data Center Demonstration project responded to the EPA's call-to-action: "Objective, credible information is needed about the performance of new available technologies and about best practices as well as the effect of both on data center availability."

This project was and continues to be the first of its kind to present both commercially available and “proof of concept” technologies hosted in commercial data centers rather than vendor evaluations or research results. End user operators demonstrate the EPA's energy efficient initiatives via implementations within their production data centers.

The energy efficiency demonstration case studies encompass operations, equipment, and site facilities improvements covered in the EPA Report. Operators document in case studies the measured energy savings and the applicability of the solution within a commercial data center. This report compiles the findings from the individual case studies and uses them to re-compute the energy saving scenarios defined by the EPA.

The inaugural 2008 Data Center Demonstration Project 2008, hosted by Sun Microsystems, covered 11 technology initiatives with 17 case studies. Results were computed in terms of energy savings and their impact on the reduction of Greenhouse gas emissions and costs. Additionally the case studies elaborated on implementation realities that must be considered. This 2008 effort is the first of an ongoing series to show quantifiable results from adopting new technology.

New technologies evaluated by commercial data centers:

• IT Computing Resource Optimization
• IT Computing Resource Optimization
• Data Center Air Flow Management
• High Efficiency Power Transformation
• Server Power Characterization & Modeling
• Free Cooling in Large Scale Data Centers
• High Efficiency Chilled Water Systems
• Wireless Sensor Network Adaptive Cooling
• High Efficiency Stand-by Power

The same model and approach will be incorporated in the 2009 Data Center Energy Efficiency Demonstration Project with case study results scheduled to be officially released at the 2009 Summit hosted by NetApp.

Participants in the 2008 Case Studies

2008 Data Center Demonstration participants comprise an informal group of technology, policy and implementation experts and partners who are engaged in creating a series of demonstration projects that show emerging and best available energy efficiency technologies and practices associated with operating, equipping and constructing data centers.

The project was launched by the Silicon Valley Leadership Group (Leadership Group) and Lawrence Berkeley National Labs (LBNL). The Leadership Group's member companies cooperate with national and regional government to address major public policy issues affecting economic health and quality of life in Silicon Valley. The Leadership Group solicited participation from its member organizations to demonstrate energy efficiency techniques within their data centers. The members either implement new initiatives or document existing initiatives within their data centers, and then share measured results and implementation details. LBNL collaborated with the EPA to help author and create the estimation model used in the EPA Report. For this project LBNL provided the technical expertise in identifying, implementing, measuring, and analyzing many of the initiatives studied.

Project contributors and their roles are set out below. Host data centers house the projects and wrote case studies. Technology partners supported data center operators by providing equipment and expertise to implement the solutions. Sponsors helped offset the implementation costs. Sun Microsystems hosted the first Data Center Energy Summit event June 26, 2008 during which findings from the individual case studies and this consolidated report were presented.

Particpant List

Accenture's Role

As a non-biased independent participant Accenture provided certain project management assistance, helped aggregate the results, and assisted the Leadership Group with the consolidated analysis. For this role Accenture provided:

• A vendor agnostic position in industry
• Extensive Green IT industry experience and knowledge capital (Accenture is recognized as a leader in Green IT by Forrester)
• Deep technical background from its Data Center Technology and Operations practice.

Read more: 2008 Case Studies