Ways to Reduce Water Consumption in Data Center
All data center management teams have been thinking about conserving renewable energies, but recently data centers are concentrating more on conserving water. Saving any amount of water saves money, because water in short as it’s mostly used in domestic purposes. Data centers require an enormous amount of water to cool cloud computing server farms. James Hamilton Data Center Designer and Researcher in Amazon estimates Data centers with a capacity of 15 Mega Watt can utilize up-to 360, 000 gallons of water per day. Hamilton added, “Water is tomorrow’s big problem, no one talks about water. The water consumption (in data centers) is super embarrassing. It just doesn”t feel
responsible. We need designs that stop using water.”
Google and Microsoft are adopting new
alternative methods to cool their massive data centers. Companies are using water from nearby rivers canals and also using recycled water. Microsoft recently added a new Data center in San Antonio because local water company can provide large quantity of recycled water; this would have less impact on city’s drinking water. In Belgium Google installed a new data center next to Industrial canal, data center can draw water to cool massive servers using industrial water and can draw water from wells and rain water. Google has designed a new cooling system and they have named it as “Hot Huts”. These Hot Huts are temporary homes for hot air which leaves main servers. Fans are installed on these huts will pull hot air from behind the servers and lead them to water cooled coil, these ambient hot air from the servers. These fans will help to cool the air by leading them to water cooled coils and thus completing the cooling cycle.
One of the best methods to conserve water is by re-cycling it. Google’s data center in Hamina, Finland uses sea water to cool servers without using any chillers. This data center is located in Gulf of Finland. Cooling systems pump cold water from sea and heat from servers are exchanged. This ambient hot water is cooled before returning to gulf. Another Google’s data center in Douglas County uses city waste water to cool its servers. In this data center large tanks are filled with this water and fin sand particles are filtered out and leaving clear water to cool its servers (this water is unsuitable for drinking purpose). Data centers must maintain their cooling systems regularly to avoid excess consumption of water. All Data centers must implement such alternative methods to cool its massive servers to reduce water consumption. Data Center Talk updates its resources everyday. Visit us to know of the latest technology and standards from the data center world. Please leave your views and comments on DCT Forum