Data canter operators oppose ASHRAE's proposal

Six representatives from some of the largest data center operators in the world united Monday to issue a joint statement opposing a new proposal to deploy fresh air cooling as the preferred tactic for cooling data centers, according to a report by Data Center Knowledge.

Executives from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Digital Realty Trust, DuPont Fabros Technology and Nokia are calling HVAC standards organization -- the Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (www.ashrae.org) -- to set cooling performance-based efficiency goals for data centers instead of adopting particular economizers over methodologies.


Google published the joint statement Monday on its Google Public Policy Blog, which is signed by Chris Crosby, senior VP of Digital Realty Trust, Hossein Fateh, president and CEO of Dupont Fabros Technology, James Hamilton, VP and distinguished engineer at Amazon, Urs Hoelzle, senior VP of operations and Google fellow at Google, Mike Manos, VP of service operations at Nokia, and Kevin Timmons, GM of data enter Services at Microsoft.

In the statement, the executives said ASHRAE's proposal would require "data centers to use economizers."

"We believe that for data centers, where the energy used to perform a function (e.g., cooling) is easily measured, efficiency standards should be performance-based, not prescriptive," the joint statement read. "In other words, the standard should set the required efficiency without prescribing the specific technologies to accomplish that goal."

Free cooling offers a more affordable alternative for data center operators by using fresh air to cool server rooms, instead of depending on energy-intensive chillers.

But using economization methods is dependent on geography and climate, since temperature and humidity affects how many hours a year a data center can use free cooling.

In the past, organizations like the Green Grid has published tools that determine the best regions for using fresh air cooling.

And although Google has long been using economizers, such as in its chiller-less data centers, the company is also seeking patents on cooling systems that use other cooling methods.

In the joint statement, the group writes that while "economizers are a great way to cool a data center... simply requiring their use doesn't guarantee an efficient system, and they may not be the best choice."

The group argues that "an overall data center-level cooling system efficiency standard needs to replace the proposed prescriptive approach to allow data center innovation to continue," adding that this very standard should establish "an aggressive target for the maximum amount of energy used by a data center for overhead functions like cooling."

Earlier this month, government agencies in the US, Europe and Japan agreed to use the Power Usage Effectiveness metric, which measures the energy efficiency of data centers.