Wednesday, May 4, 2016

The Futuristic Data Center




Have you heard about the two “Damn Daniel!” guys? I have! They were recently on the Ellen Show explaining how their videos depicting the clothing style of Daniel (mainly composed of white vans) became so infamous that they cannot go to Target without being recognized! What a life! To be honest, after watching those videos, I went straight online to buy white vans on eBay. Oh wait! Do you know about the eBay Mercury Data Center? I bet you don’t.
The online Auction Site and Marketplace eBay wanted something different from the standard boring box shaped building with its Project Mercury Data Center built in 2011 in Phoenix, Arizona. In an unusual move eBay had issued a public request for proposals and invited outside firms to submit designs. The containerized data center is one of the most efficient data centers ever built, recording exceptional performance on industry metrics while operating in temperatures as high as 115 degrees F. The eBay facility provides some of the best evidence to date that the industry’s efforts to share best practices on design and operations have dramatically improved the energy efficiency of data centers. eBay’s Phoenix facility features high-density server deployments that are cooled with hot water, a strategy that works in data centers operating at elevated temperatures. The eBay facility uses traditional raised-floor space, but also deploys servers in data center containers on the roof of the building. It features standardized hardware, apps, and processes so additional resources can easily be added as needed. Much of the center’s processing capacity comes from the containerized servers on the roof. These strategies have yielded unusual efficiency. The Phoenix data center recorded an average Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.35 during a one-week period in January 2012, while the rooftop containers had a partial PUE of 1.018. That means that at peak efficiency, the IT equipment in eBay’s containers was using more than 98 percent of the available power, an accomplishment which appears to have no precedent.
The Data Center takes its design cues from the movie Tron: Legacy (the coolest thing ever!!!!). During the grand opening, eBay showed a video of staffers dressed in Tron outfits using glowing discs and light sabers to fend off a denial of service attack. I am so JEALOUS right now…

 

No comments:

Post a Comment