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Dickens is a Design Principal for Jacobs Global Buildings, focused on the Mission Critical and Government Sectors. He can be reached at kevin.dickens@jacobs.com.
You may be underestimating how many energy-saving steps you can take right now for that data center, no approvals required. And why are so many people still in there, anyway?
After 20 years in data centers, you might think I hang out on the bleeding edge with liquid-cooled chips, servers immersed in mineral oil, and computers singing “Daisy Bell” in three-part harmony.
Trends don’t always follow the expected path (or timeline), but the basics remain the basics and increased cabinet density remains inevitable. Let’s revisit the progress of liquid in data center strategy and the tenets of a future-proof(ish) hybrid design for today.
As the saying goes, the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. On a data center project, some tailored software can often point things in the right direction. Novices and grizzled veterans alike would be wise to peruse some of these options for maximizing their new construction and retrofit results.
Simple versus oversimple, Matchmaker versus Master, innovation versus inertia … our veteran data center expert looks back on time spent with an industry leader and looks forward with some lessons in mind.
Are we headed for a scenario reminiscent of big-budget disaster films? Maybe not. But when it comes to water usage, it’s time for engineers to put down the popcorn and embrace a new role: designer of more responsible data centers. Optimizing cooling towers, boosting the CoC, and considering your WUE are just three steps for maintaining the flow of information while minimizing the flow of H2O.
To this day, the greatest surprise of my life occurred when I was a young student at Berkeley Junior High. At the year-end assembly, unexpectedly, I heard my name called as they announced the recipient of the Seventh Grade Citizenship Award.
The federal push toward break-even building energy is real, and the clock is ticking. The public sector will be flocking toward forward-thinking designs (and designers) like never before — prepare to rule more of the roost, or lay an egg.
What aspects of bleeding-edge data center thought can I incorporate for leading-edge designs? What is the future of the compressor in these environments? Or the future of a designer who doesn’t ask questions like these?
Why are you an engineer? Did you love math and science as a kid and simply follow your bliss? Or were you pushed into it by your guidance counselor even though your heart was somewhere else?
Unprecedented vendor-neutral data has been brought down from the mountain on a digital tablet. That’s helpful for data center designers, but applying a little thought and site-specific consideration can reveal the path to wisdom in areas like failure rate, noise, power draw versus temperatures, and more.
