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Lowering Energy Costs in the Low End datacenter
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Lowering Energy Costs in the Low End datacenter

I'm curious to know what my fellow providers do to keep costs down in their fellow datacenters.

Hopefully not that. But what do you spend money on to save money?

We've only been using LED light. All lighting shuts off automatically when leaving, CRAC tune-ups.

Extracting the hottest air to be replaced with external air in the cold months.
Using Datacenter Air to heat the rest of the building in the winter.

All un-rented stock kept offline. Employee areas only conditioned/ventilated while occupied.

packing the space between racks and underneath with foam to prevent air seepage from cold-to-hot aisles.

Do any of you preload config/modules to reduce power usage on your individual nodes? I've had great success with powertop from Intel at reducing power usage of laptops. It tackles hundreds of little things like shutting off unused busses and controllers, reducing cpu wakeups, more efficient IO scheduling, thermal fan throttling. Across a whole datacenter that could make a big difference.

What kinds of Cooling are the cheapest to run in your Low End environment and why?

Comments

  • cociucociu Member
    edited July 2020

    i have more strong cables but the connection is the same :) BTW is copyright ... so you can pay me.

  • team_traitorteam_traitor Member
    edited July 2020

    I am not a provider so don't mind this.
    Are you into renewable power source?
    It would be nice if you are near a canal or something like that.
    See this

    or how about installing a wind turbine in your roofs :smile:

    PS: I am not affiliated with this company.

    Thanked by 1mrTom
  • MINIMAN10000MINIMAN10000 Member
    edited July 2020

    I don't know if you noticed but the last majority of wind turbines are huge. It's because more consistent powerful winds are found higher up.

    It isn't very cost effective to put personal wind turbines.

    Solar can have anywhere from 3 to 8 hours of sunlight so that depends on where you live.

    Water turbines are location dependant.

    Generally there is one optional green energy option dependant on location and the lack of energy storage means you have to look into if and at what value you can sell power to the grid.

  • terrahostterrahost Member, Patron Provider

    We utilize Free Air Cooling at our two datacenters in Norway, which means we use filtered and humidity controlled outside air.

    Since we're located in stone cold Norway this means we can use it 10-11 out of 12 months a year, cutting cooling costs by up to 90% compared to regular HVAC. :)

  • AlwaysSkintAlwaysSkint Member
    edited July 2020

    ^ Brrrr.
    Try doing that in Phoenix. ;) "Shut the door, you're letting the heat in!"

    @UnrealServers I do try to idle my dedi as much as possible. :)

    Thanked by 11gservers
  • @terrahost said:
    We utilize Free Air Cooling at our two datacenters in Norway, which means we use filtered and humidity controlled outside air.

    Since we're located in stone cold Norway this means we can use it 10-11 out of 12 months a year, cutting cooling costs by up to 90% compared to regular HVAC. :)

    Really gotta move to Norway, I hate warm weather with all my heart.

  • LMFTFY

    @serv_ee said: I hate warm humid/muggy weather with all my heart

    Dry heat any day of the week. Hate being cold.

  • @AlwaysSkint said:
    LMFTFY

    @serv_ee said: I hate warm humid/muggy weather with all my heart

    Dry heat any day of the week. Hate being cold.

    Until you get that DC power bill tho, right? :dizzy:

  • Domestic heating bills are worse than a couple of fans and open windows. :|

  • @AlwaysSkint said:
    Domestic heating bills are worse than a couple of fans and open windows. :|

    Really that bad? I got my home AC running 24/7 and my electricity bill was around $30.

  • ChievoChievo Member

    @serv_ee said:

    @AlwaysSkint said:
    Domestic heating bills are worse than a couple of fans and open windows. :|

    Really that bad? I got my home AC running 24/7 and my electricity bill was around $30.

    I am paying 120€ for 2 persons per month without AC with AC 160€

  • One of the perks of getting $0.05 per kWh.

    And companies sometimes get even lower than that. They are currently building some huge ass DC here for the same reason.

  • AlwaysSkintAlwaysSkint Member
    edited July 2020

    It obviously depends on which country but Scotland/UK energy costs are dire! Why we don't better utilise hydro power, like in NZ, I'll never know. The fad for wind turbines everywhere would be better invested in superconductor technology and alternative renewables, IMHumbleO.
    Gravity-derived energy anyone? Look at the power of the moon and its' influence on tides.

  • UnrealServersUnrealServers Member
    edited July 2020

    @jeorlie said:
    Are you into renewable power source?
    It would be nice if you are near a canal or something like that.

    Actually..... I'm working on hydroelectric generation.

    Our lease includes FREE WATER service, so I've T'd off one of the urinals and we're working on the drain, but should be ready in a month. Gonna save a tonne of money!

    @serv_ee said:
    One of the perks of getting $0.05 per kWh.

    How do you manage that? We're stuck at about $0.13/kwh after all the taxes and fees. power company is f-ing leaching us to death and week there's some wise-ass "potential new client" asking for a bulk discount. Power company isn't giving out bulk discounts today so uhm, no.

    Only discounts I want are buying a year at a time, and then only because they reward legitimate clients, and we have a chance of getting a bonus if an illegitimate client does malicious shit in their first month.

    Thanked by 1AlwaysSkint
  • terrahostterrahost Member, Patron Provider

    How do you manage that? We're stuck at about $0.13/kwh after all the taxes and fees. power company is f-ing leaching us to death and week there's some wise-ass "potential new client" asking for a bulk discount. Power company isn't giving out bulk discounts today so uhm, no.

    Move to Norway, we currently pay 0.0045 USD per kWh. Yes, that is correct, and it's nuts :O Usually its around 0.045 USD per kWh converted from NOK.

  • dustincdustinc Member, Patron Provider, Top Host

    @OP sounds like you're doing everything you can! Good work.

    Where is your facility by the way? Any pics?

  • North Kansas City, MO We're not keen on pics. My cabling never looks as sexy as the pornography readily available on data center brochures anyway. And there are too many assholes wanting us to keep their shipping boxes and old hardware around after upgrades 'just in case' for the place to ever look nice enough to photograph. We're clearly not charging enough to store trash.

  • AlwaysSkintAlwaysSkint Member
    edited July 2020

    I just know my power-hungry low-end dedi sits amongst a pile of boxes in the back room, somewhere under the rubble. ;)

  • @UnrealServers said: Our lease includes FREE WATER service, so I've T'd off one of the urinals and we're working on the drain, but should be ready in a month. Gonna save a tonne of money!

    Are you taking the piss?! :-D

  • @UnrealServers said:

    @jeorlie said:
    Are you into renewable power source?
    It would be nice if you are near a canal or something like that.

    Actually..... I'm working on hydroelectric generation.

    Our lease includes FREE WATER service, so I've T'd off one of the urinals and we're working on the drain, but should be ready in a month. Gonna save a tonne of money!

    Glad to hear that. Post some video on youtube after that.

    Thanked by 1AlwaysSkint
  • @AlwaysSkint said:

    @UnrealServers said: Our lease includes FREE WATER service, so I've T'd off one of the urinals and we're working on the drain, but should be ready in a month. Gonna save a tonne of money!

    Are you taking the piss?! :-D

    When I do, I aim into that hydro turbine. Maybe I can get a few milliwatthours out of it.

    You got a box with us? How ya like it?

    Thanked by 1AlwaysSkint
  • rcxbrcxb Member

    @serv_ee said:
    Until you get that DC power bill tho, right? :dizzy:

    Actually, Google, Facebook, etc. locate their DCs in desert areas specifically because evaporative cooling is so very cheap and effective.

    Thanked by 1AlwaysSkint
  • @UnrealServers said: You got a box with us? How ya like it?

    I got a super-duper extraordinary low cost BF deal a few years back (Dual Quad Xeon 5420) and totally love it. Hence me plugging Unreal at every opportunity. Hopefully, you've at least broke even on it, by now. ;)

  • What about disabling unused subsystems like sound, parallel/serial ports, bt/wifi?

    I know I have the techs pull any irrelevant addon cards like firewire, or extra nice when we're not utilizing them, and disconnecting if not outright removing optical drives. Any decorative LEDs hit the trash bin.

    I actually remember one time that I shaved 50 watts off of a rack by removing power LEDs. The vendor at the time was putting these stupid retina burning blue power leds because why not. I noticed one day those thing were HOT, and heat means my money is going to shit.

    I imagine they have some low efficiency buck converter on the led die to keep from using a pcb. But it was more than a watt a piece.

    I don't omit them from builds normally, but was curious if others do.

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