Power consumption: a challenge for data centers

Data centers are at the heart of discussions when it comes to energy consumption. To better address the challenges that lie ahead, the Swiss Datacenter Efficiency Association (SDEA) was formed in 2020. This alliance of industry and academic organizations came together to create a single, integrated approach to certifying the efficiency and emissions of data centers in Switzerland. But this idea didn't come about by accident, it was born out of a challenge issued by digitalswitzerland in 2018. The goal of the challenge was for Switzerland to become an attractive country for hosting data centers by implementing a label to certify green data centers.

At a time when many questions are being asked about energy supply, Energeiaplus spoke to SDEA President Babak Falsafi.

Energeiaplus: How much electricity is consumed in data centers and where does it go?

Babak Falsafi, SDEA President

Babak Falsafi: Recent volatility in the energy markets and forecasts of unprecedented increases in electricity prices have led people to think about the growth in demand for electricity in IT services and data centers in the coming years. Electricity consumption in data centers has been relatively stable over the past ten years and now accounts for more than 3.6% of electricity in Switzerland. This stability is due to companies moving to the cloud and cloud providers being mindful of electricity consumption to maximize return on investment, or hosting their IT equipment with co-tenants who are now building ever more efficient housing infrastructures for cooling, power distribution and heat recycling. Thanks to the pioneers of sustainable data center (DC) construction in the rental market, today more than 80% of the electricity in newly built data centers goes to IT equipment (server, storage, network).

What is the forecasted growth of electricity in IT services?
Three trends will have a fundamental impact on the growth of electricity demand in IT services. The first is that the base of silicon-based digital equipment has reached physical limits in manufacturing to increase density per chip, requiring more IT equipment to be built and operated to meet sustained growth in computing demand. On the other hand, artificial intelligence has experienced a six-fold annual growth in computational demand over the past decade, an order of magnitude greater than typical annual increases in chip density. Finally, there is a proliferation of "Edge" data centers to ensure proximity to users and data sources for digital sovereignty and rapid decision making.

What technologies can help quantify the effectiveness of IT services?
The dominant metric for efficiency in data centers has been PUE (Power Usage Efficiency) for decades. PUE represents the fraction of electricity consumed in the data center infrastructure (cooling, electrical subsystems) and not in the IT equipment. Modern DCs built in Switzerland aim for a PUE below 1.25. Out of 1 MW supplied to a modern DC with a PUE of 1.25, 800 kW are consumed in the IT equipment. What has been missing in recent years is clear data on how efficiently the IT equipment consumes this 800 kW to provide services.

IT efficiency data should take into account not only the efficiency of hardware equipment and technological excellence, but also whether the computing, communication, and storage capacity of the equipment is properly sized to meet the load offered by the IT services. By analogy, a high-efficiency household appliance (e.g., washing machine) that runs for a full cycle with minimal load does not use electricity efficiently. Finally, these indicators also require guidelines, software tools and best practices to be properly measured.

What is the AES label and how can it help?
The SDEA Label was launched by an alliance of academic and industry partners to certify the efficiency and emissions of the entire "IT and infrastructure" in data centers. The SDEA Label provides clarity on the location and efficiency of power consumption in the data center. The key differentiator of the SDEA Label is its metric for IT equipment and for heat recycling. The SDEA KPI tool, a calculator for total efficiency and emissions quantification, captures key data, including workload consolidation and virtualization, server, storage and network component utilization, data compression, component technology excellence and operating temperature. According to a recent study by the International Energy Agency, the SDEA Label is the only certification for data centers that includes a quantitative ranking and not just an endorsement. The SDEA Label is partially funded by the SwissEnergy program of the Swiss Federal Office of Energy and has Schneider Electric and SICPA as premium sponsors.

Sidebar:
The alliance was initiated by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and includes EcoCloud at EPFL, Green IT Switzerland, the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences (HSLU), the Swiss Data Center Association (SDCA) and the Swiss Telecommunications Association (asut). The initiative is supported by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy through the SuisseEnergie program.

Interview by Fabien Lüthi, SFOE communication