Facebook’s Latest Innovations in Data Center Design
Senior Electrical Engineer, Facebook  Paul Hsu
Datacenter Mechanical Engineer, Facebook Dan Lee

Below is a side by side slide Paul presented on the difference between a typical data center power conversion vs. the Facebook design.

Dan has a slide with side-by-side comparison of a typical mechanical system vs. the Facebook design.

A couple of other slides share are on the Reactor Power Panel and Battery cabinet.

The results Facebook shared.

“For data center geeks, we expect our Buffalo data center design will have an annualized average PUE (power usage effectiveness) of 1.1 or better,” said Filo. That would challenge the most efficient facilities built by Google (GOOG), which has an average PUE of 1.16 for its six company-built data centers, with one facility currently running at a PUE of 1.12.

With its Lockport design, Yahoo is joining Google on the cutting-edge of energy efficiency by running a data center without chillers, which provide refrigerated water for cooling systesm and are among the most energy-intensive components of a data center.

In adopting a design that is less reliant on chillers, Yahoo is following the lead of Google (GOOG), which recently built a data center in Belgium that operates without any chillers. Google executives expect the Belgium facility will soon be the company’s most efficient, and may push its PUE below 1.1.

Plans filed today with the town of Lockport indicate that the Yahoo Computing Coops will be metal prefabricated structures measuring 120 feet by 60 feet. The company plans to use five of these structures in its Lockport complex. Each of the coops will have louvers built into the side of the building to allow cold air to enter the computing area. The complex is being laid out to take advantage of prevailing wind direction, which would blow directly into the louver system.

Each coop also has a peaked roof, with a “penthouse” running along the top of the structure to manage the release of  waste heat from the hot aisle, according to the Buffalo News.

Site plans suggest the coops are designed to support 5 megawatts of computing load.  The facility is designed to be completed in two phases, with a first phase using 10 megawatts of power and a second phase adding 15 megawatts.

Filko said the NewYork project is the next step in a long-term process to improve Yahoo’s data center energy efficiency.

“Today we’re committing to reduce the carbon intensity of our data centers by at least 40% by 2014,” Filo wrote. “In other words, we’ll decrease our average electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from our data centers around the world. We’ll get there through a combination of innovative data center design, improving how we utilize our servers, cloud computing, and locating our data centers in areas where cleaner energy is available.”

In its new Chicago data center project, developer Ascent Corp. has adopted a flexible approach designed to accommodate a variety of customer requirements within a single multi-tenant facility. It’s an approach to data center design that that echoes the old Burger King slogan: ”Have it Your Way.”

“We think that users are looking for a lot more choices in the ability to customize solutions,” said Phil Horstmann, the CEO of Ascent, who calls the approach Dynamic Data Center Suites.

Ascent’s CH2 site is near the huge facility the company recently built for Microsoft Corp., and will be able to leverage the extraordinary power and fiber infrastructure supporting that project. CH2 will have 50 megawatts of power capacity and its own substation.

Once the power and telecom infrastructure are in place, Ascent will subdivide the facility according to customer requirements. “We’ll move the demising walls where they need to be, and then wall off the equipment yard,” said Horstmann. “The customer space and equipment yard become plug-and-play.”

Ascent can deliver a powered shell for companies who want to build out their own facility, or completed data center space for customers seeking turn-key solutions. With the turn-key space, each customer can select the design and infrastructure they desire.

As a result, one company’s raised floor space may reside next to another data center with its equipment on slab, with each customer using dedicated mechanical and electrical infrastructure and their own equipment yard.

This kind of flexibility could be important in Chicago, a composite market in which data center tenant profiles are spread across a range of industries. That includes financial tenants seeking low-latency trading faciltiies, web hosting companies, Fortune 500 enterprise customers, and Internet companies.

“We still see a high degreee of demand for this market,” said Horstmann. “Some of the other data center providers have inventory in this market. But it’s a great peering city, and there’s a lot of interest from enterprise, financial and hosting customers.”