"Green Data Center: Leveraging Green Energy for a Cleaner Digital Future"

Introduction

The first thing that comes to mind while writing an essay on this subject is, "What is a data center?" and "What does it mean to be a green data center?"

‘Data is the new Oil’ is a very pertinent quote in terms of growing digitalization. Digitalization has not left any sector isolated from its influence, sooner or later it will engulf every aspect of the business and personal life. So, if you deal in the below business applications in one or another form, you are part of this ‘Data Economy’:

• Email and file sharing
• Productivity applications
• Customer relationship management (CRM)
• Enterprise resource planning (ERP) and databases
• Big data, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning
• Virtual desktops, communications, and collaboration services

Though I firmly think that everyone now must be aware of ‘data’ in the age of social media and daily digital exchanges, many might wonder what is this data how it is generated and available, and how data centers are related to this. To address them, in simple words, anything we share across the digital world or post on social media, including text messages, images, remarks, and even phone conversations made over any kind of communication network, is considered data.

A data center is, in the simplest terms, a physical space where businesses keep their vital software and data. The network of computers and storage resources makes up the data center. A data center is a real space in the physical room, building, or facility that houses IT infrastructure for building, running, and delivering applications and services and for storing and managing the data associated with those applications and services.

Key Components of Data Centre

The key components of a data center design include routers, switches, firewalls, storage systems, servers, and application delivery controllers. These components store and manage critical data and applications thus data center security is the most differentiating feature among data center design. Together, they provide:

Network infrastructure:

This connects servers (physical and virtualized), data center services, storage, and external connectivity to end-user locations. They deliver applications, services, and data to end-user devices. It comes in different forms:

o?? Rack-mount servers?are wide, flat standalone servers—the size of a small pizza box— designed to be stacked on top of each other in a rack, to save space (vs. a tower or desktop server). Each rack-mount server operates on its own power supply, cooling fans, network switches, and ports, along with the dedicated processor, memory, and storage.

o?? Blade servers?are designed to save even more space. Each blade includes processors, network controllers, memory, and sometimes storage; they’re made to fit into a standardized chassis that holds multiple blades and contains the power supply, network management, and other resources for all the blades in the chassis.

o?? Mainframes are high-performance computers with multiple processors that that can do the work of an entire room of rack-mount or blade servers. Mainframes can process billions of calculations and transactions in real-time.

The data center network, consisting of various types of switches, routers, and fiber optics, carries network traffic across the servers (called east/west traffic), and to/from the servers to the clients (called north/south traffic).

Storage infrastructure

Data is the fuel of the modern data center. Storage systems are used to hold this valuable commodity viz. data. Most servers include some local storage capability, called direct-attached storage (DAS), which enables the most frequently used data (hot data) to remain close to the CPU. Two other data center storage configurations include network-attached storage (NAS), and a storage area network (SAN).

NAS provides data storage and data access to multiple servers over a standard Ethernet connection. The NAS device is usually a dedicated server with multiple storage media i.e., hard disk drives (HDDs) and/or solid-state drives (SSDs). Like NAS, a SAN enables shared storage, but a SAN uses a separate network for the data and consists of a more complex mix of multiple storage servers, application servers, and storage management software.

Power Supply and Cable Management

Data centers need to be always on, on at every level. Most servers feature dual power supplies. Data centers operate on double electricity feed to avoid electricity disruptions and also house DG sets and Batteries for any interruptions. Battery-operated uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) protect against power surges and brief power outages. Powerful generators can kick in if a more severe power outage occurs.

With thousands of servers connected by various cables, cable management is an important data center design concern. Cables arranged in close space can lead to cross-talk, which can negatively impact data transfer rates and signal transmission, in addition to same, they can generate heat-damaging cables in the medium and long run.

Types of Data Centre

The classification of data centre depends on whether they are owned by one or many organizations, how they fit (if they fit) into the topology of other data centers, what technologies they use for computing and storage, and even their source of energy. The following are prevailing data center types:

Redundancy of Data Centre

The most widely adopted standard for data center design and data center infrastructure is ANSI/TIA-942. This certification ensures compliance with one or many of the following four categories of data center tiers rated for levels of redundancy and fault tolerance.

Green Data Centres

Now the Gyan on data centers must be enough, many would still be thinking of what it means by green data centers.

Green Data Centres are nothing but those who operate on green energy supply. Green Options available for data centers can be summarised herein below:

Now taking note of the fact that green i.e., renewable is intermittent and variable in nature, can meet up and decarbonize the power requirement of data centers, is something to ponder upon.

While the objective to fully decarbonize the energy requirements in data centers is appreciable and achievable in many cases, it may not be advisable, feasible, or economically viable in all circumstances. For instance, Renewable Energy in combination of Solar-Wind-BESS or Solar-Wind-Hydro may offset the grid-procured electricity requirements of data centers, however, the real concern lies in its feasibility and economic viability.

The adoption of renewable energy in data centers is driven by several factors, including sustainability goals, cost savings, and the increasing availability and affordability of renewable power sources. As data center energy demands continue to grow, the integration of renewables will be crucial for minimizing the environmental impact of these critical infrastructure facilities.

Devising RE strategies befitting with multi-objective scenarios is something that needs deliberations, and brainstorming. Not only this, once suited options are considered, the great effort lies in contract design considering the prevailing legal and regulatory framework, and operating the same for a foreseeable period is something that is a niche skill we have and would be happy to assist.

Disclaimer: This article does not represent the view of the organization and should be considered as the view of the author only and is written for the sole purpose of initiating a public discourse on the usage of green energy in data centers from academic perspectives.