Server farm goes solar

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://money.cnn.com/2007/10/03/technology/solar_servers.biz2/index.htm?section=money_technology

Server farm goes solar
A data storage company generates all its own power using solar panels.
Business 2.0 Magazine
By Todd Woody, Business 2.0 Magazine
October 4 2007: 4:53 AM EDT

(Business 2.0 Magazine) -- Massive data centers are vital to the economy. They are also notorious power hogs. If their numbers keep growing at the expected rate, the United States alone will need nearly a dozen new power plants by 2011 just to keep the data flowing, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

That's why a small server-farm company called AISO.net (for "affordable Internet services online") has gone completely off the grid. Located 80 miles southeast of Los Angeles in the desert hamlet of Romoland, AISO.net has flanked its 2,000-square-foot building with two banks of ground-mounted solar panels, which generate 12 kilowatts of electricity. Batteries store the juice for nighttime operation.

To slash energy consumption, AISO.net switched from 120 individual servers to four IBM blades running virtualization software that lets one computer do the work of multiple machines. The cooling system cranks up for only about 10 minutes an hour, and when the outside temperature drops to 60 degrees, air is sucked into the building to cool the servers. Solar tubes built into the roof illuminate the facility's interior.

The service is attracting plenty of eco-conscious clients. Al Gore's Live Earth concerts were webcast on AISO.net's servers in July. And San Diego startup GreenestHost is reselling AISO.net's services to mom-and-pop website operators who want to go carbon-neutral. "Small data centers could easily start to adapt and make changes like this," says AISO.net co-founder Phil Nail, who claims the project cost about $100,000.

His monthly electric bills, once as high as $3,000, have dropped to zero. Larger data centers can't match that. But Sun Microsystems (Charts, Fortune 500) did recently slash power consumption 61 percent by consolidating its Silicon Valley servers into a single state-of-the-art facility. And IBM (Charts, Fortune 500) BladeCenter VP Alex Yost sees growing demand for energy-efficient servers like the ones AISO.net uses. "It's an enormous economic opportunity," he says.

[Deja Q]

1. Cool. Plus server farms, with thin clients, will render many PCs obsolete.

I just wonder how small businesses, who use their own PCs to do their work, will cope if the larger ones stomp them out of their livelihoods.

[hunter]

2. Batteries are nasty.

I can almost understand why a server farm might use them, but still, if there was any long term disruption of the electric grid and no fuel availible for backup generators, let's say because of a giant earthquake, then things are probably so messed up that battery backup is the least of one's problems.

The overall environmental impact of this project would be greatly reduced if it didn't have batteries. When the sun was shining excess electricity would be sent into the grid reducing the carbon dioxide output of fossil fueled power power plants to a greater extent than if the energy is stored locally in batteries.

Batteries are inefficint and even the best batteries have a limited lifespan and require periodic recycling of the very toxic materials they contain.

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. Key phrase - "has gone completely off the grid"

That makes batteries a necessity.

(*My* hosting service only works when the sun is shining...)

[hunter]

5. But they are just doing it to look good.

But the gesture is more harmful to the environment than a grid linked system.

[OKIsItJustMe]

7. That's okay by me

They're demonstrating the viability of solar power.

As for the batteries... what sort of batteries do you suppose they are?

I can't tell from their web site, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're NiMH which have no heavy metals, and aren't too bad, ecologically speaking.

[jpak]

4. Depleted uranium hexafluoride and spent reactor fuel are nastier

and there's a lot more of it too...

[hunter]

6. I wasn't advocating nuclear powered server farms...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon

[skids]

8. Virtualization is a must...

...and is starting to look attractive even for mid-sized operations.

It would not be all that necessary if it were not for really poorly written software and OSes that make it necessary to separate services each onto their own machine to isolate them from each other's bugs.

The number one energy waster in high technology is spaghetti code and lack of spending on software quality.