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HP’s Finnish data center reaches high level of energy efficiency

10/09/2008

The IT-giant HP has located one of its five most strategic next generation data centers (NGDCs) in Vantaa, Finland, and is now pushing its energy efficiency to the maximum.

According to Jyrki Laurikainen, property manager at HP, there are three main concerns when building and operating a data center: usability, cooling power and the average electricity consumption of the infrastructure.

Laurikainen believes that the physical security and energy consumption of HP’s Finnish data center are world class. In his opinion there is no data center anywhere in the world – used for non-military purposes – which is as secure as the one in Finland.

The energy use of the IT sector has been recognized as a global environmental problem during the past few years. Huge data center facilities can use a lot of energy to keep their server racks ticking over at the right temperature.

The Uptime Institute has developed the PUE (power usage effectiveness) number to measure how much power a data center is using. A typical data center reaches a PUE number of 2.4-2.6. In data centers using industry best practices the PUE number can be 1.8, and in ideal cases 1.6.

Laurikainen says that the PUE targets for HP’s Finnish data center are now below 1.5 because it has already reached the ideal level of 1.6. Compared to the typical PUE number of 2.5, this represents an energy saving of 36%, or about EUR 50,000 at current electricity prices, to one of his customers who is using 100kW servers.

Data centers located in Finland can also make good use of so-called free cooling, which switches on automatically when the outside temperature falls below 14 degrees. When the outside temperature approaches zero, it provides all the cold air required to cool the equipment.