ADVERTISEMENT

Subscribe to the PowerPulse Newsletter

Conferences and Forums

Darnell's Energy Summit

Darnell's Power Forum

Green Building Power Forum

Smart Grid Electronics Forum

Industry News

April 6, 2009

Google Reveals Container Data Center To Public

Power Channels: Energy Efficiency

Google Inc. has confirmed its use of data center containers at its first Data Center Efficiency Summit in Mountain View, California. Google provided an overview of how the containers were implemented in the company’s first data center project in the fall of 2005.

The servers are based on a proprietary design which has been kept under wraps for years. Most companies buy servers from the likes of Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, or Sun Microsystems. But Google, which has hundreds of thousands of servers and considers running them part of its core expertise, designs and builds its own.

ADVERTISEMENT

The servers are now in the sixth or seventh generation and feature a 12V battery on each server in lieu of a centralized uninterruptible power supply. This design ensures servers have continuous power, but results in lower costs and eliminates any wasted capacity. Efficiency is raised from 92-95% for a large UPS to over 99.9% for the individual battery design.

Each server is a 2U thick rackmount affair with dual processors and two hard drives. The motherboard is Google-designed and built by Gigabyte. Each board features eight DIMM slots and run either AMD or Intel x86 processors. Another surprise is in the power supply design which only supplies 12V power with conversions for 5 and 3.3V taking place on the motherboard. This allows Google to run the PSUs closer to rated capacity which means it runs at a higher efficiency. The design adds about $1 to $2 dollars to the cost of the motherboard but reduces the cost of the power supply.

The Google facility features a "container hanger" filled with 45 containers, with some housed on a second-story balcony. Each shipping container can hold up to 1,160 servers, and uses 250kW of power, giving the container a power density of more than 780W per square foot. Google’s design allows the containers to operate at a temperature of 81°C in the cold aisle. Those specs are seen in some advanced designs today, but were rare in 2005 when the facility was built.

Opinion: Unraveling the Ultra-Low Power Design Issues

Google’s design focused on "power above, water below,", and the racks are actually suspended from the ceiling of the container. The below-floor cooling is pumped into the hot aisle through a raised floor, passes through the racks and is returned via a plenum behind the racks. The cooling fans are variable speed and tightly managed, allowing the fans to run at the lowest speed required to cool the rack at that moment.

Google was awarded a patent on a portable data center in a shipping container in October 2008, confirming a 2005 report that the company was building prototypes of container-based data centers in a garage in Mountain View. Containers also featured prominently in Google’s patent filing for a floating data center that generates its own electricity using wave energy.

Share this story

Send via E-mail
Post to Twitter

On the Web:

Google Inc.

ADVERTISEMENT

White Papers

March 11, 2013

Power Modules for Charger Applications

Sponsored by Vincotech

February 27, 2013

The Adaptive Cell Converter Topology Enables Constant Efficiency Over Universal Input AC Line in Front-End, High-Density Power Factor Correction Applications

Sponsored by Vicor Corp.

February 27, 2013

From 48 V direct to Intel VR12.0: Saving "Big Data" $500,000 per datacenter, per year

Sponsored by Vicor Corp.

More White Papers

Most Popular

Design Features

October 22, 2012

Energy Efficiency with Class D Amplifier Modules

Class-D switching amplifiers are helping audio designers create personal multimedia devices and home audio/visual systems that demonstrate how compact and stylish equipment can also deliver high sound quality and high audio output power. The key to this breakthrough, providing freedom from the large and bulky boxes housing traditional audio products, lies in the class-D amplifier’s high energy efficiency, which is typically around 90%. This allows designers to reduce or eliminate heatsinks as well as using smaller-sized PCBs and smaller components such as transformers, connectors and power supplies.

Read this paper

Design Features

October 8, 2012

The Role of Hall Effect Sensors in Power Distribution Infrastructure

Power distribution units (PDUs) form an essential part of modern computing and data communications hardware. They provide multiple outputs for transferring electrical power with maximum efficiency, controlling the power capacity and safeguarding against the possible causes of supply interruption. With an ever increasing need from tech savvy consumers for higher data throughput and greater quantities of data storage capacity, as well as tough international legislation now governing CO&sub2; emissions, the demands being placed on these units are proving challenging for engineering teams to satisfy.

Read this paper

Product Focus

August 13, 2012

The Year in AC-DC Power Supply Technology

The past year witnessed significant new product releases, technological developments, and industry news related to the field of AC-DC Power Supply technology.

Read this paper

Read More Technical Features

 

©2013 Darnell Group Inc.