EMC DURHAM CLOUD DATA CENTER Energy efficient design and construction EMC IT was hard at work reducing operational costs, increasing IT agility, and preparing for a dynamic future in the cloud when it faced the necessity, as well as the opportunity, to relocate its corporate data center. With its existing data center in Westborough, Massachusetts quickly running out of capacity EMC decided to build a new energy-efficient and a 100-percent virtual data center in Durham, North Carolina. EMC s new 450,000 square foot facility will also house the company s first U. S. based Center of Excellence (COE). The Durham COE will consolidate regional EMC research, development, and proof-of-concept labs, and offer a wide range of consulting and technical services, customer executive briefings, and a live showcase of EMC and partner solutions. To maximize return on its multi-year, multimillion-dollar investment, EMC IT has made flexibility the ability to adapt to new technologies with minimal disruption over the next 20 years its priority. As a result, energy efficiency, modularity, and low-impact construction have been primary design decision drivers. Environmental innovations include: a rooftop water collection system; free air cooling for much of the year; cold aisle containment; and flywheel technology that eliminates the need for batteries in uninterruptable power systems (UPS). Today, the project is on track for meeting a stringent power usage effectiveness (PUE) objective of 1.3 PUE, and obtaining LEED Silver certification. EMC PERSPECTIVE
MODULAR FACILITY CONSTRUCTION To minimize impact, EMC retained the outside structure of the former 450,000 square foot warehouse, and is taking a three-phased, modular, box-in-a-box design approach to complete the internal space 150,000 square feet at a time. Cooling and power are implemented independently with each module. Cooling and airhandling plant infrastructure units are built offsite to very tight tolerances and then placed in the building. DATA CENTER AND DEVELOPMENT LAB Phase 1 construction included the new 20,000 square foot cloud data center (expandable to 30,000 square feet in a full build scenario), as well as a 55,000 square foot Development Lab. Close, two-way collaboration between the design and construction teams enabled both efforts to move ahead in parallel and shorten timeframes. Ground was broken in January 2010, and the data center portion of the Durham facility was commissioned on October 1, 2010. In parallel with the final stages of construction, EMC began to stage IT equipment at the site, so cabling and installation could begin immediately after commissioning. ENERGY INNOVATIONS The Durham data center is designed to operate as a Tier III data center with N+1 redundancy and redundant pathways for 99.982 percent availability. The new data center is the same size 20,000 square feet of raised floor as the old data center, but will be 100 percent white space, dedicated solely to IT infrastructure. All power and mechanical plants are located elsewhere in the building. Efficiency innovations include cold aisle containment that increases temperature regulation control for high-density equipment, and air-intake plenums at the perimeter of the building that provide free air-cooling for more than half the year. The energy- and space-efficient design, combined with the progress made in IT consolidation, virtualization, rationalization, and optimization on EMC IT s Journey to the Cloud, is expected to provide enough space and power capacity to meet EMC data center requirements for years to come. Cold Aisle Containment 2
DURHAM DATA CENTER AT-A-GLANCE EMC IT set out to build a data center for the future that would be: Energy efficient: as cost-effective to operate as possible with the lowest carbon footprint. Flexible: able to support today s advanced cloud technologies, such as the Vblock platform from VCE, the Virtual Computing Environment coalition, as well as tomorrow s architectures with minimal disruption to production operations. Lower utility and property costs, an educated workforce, and a large, existing building were the primary reasons EMC selected Durham, North Carolina as the site for its new data center. Electricity costs are about one third of what the company pays in Massachusetts. DESIGN Energy analysis studies (lifecycle cost analysis) were performed as a portion of the design process to assist the team with decision-making on the main utility infrastructure systems. Energy modeling studies were performed to substantiate applications for energy incentive/ rebate programs through the local utility provider. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models were used to analyze air-flow, air-delivery, and return-air temperatures within both the Data Center and Development Lab portions of the facility. Other studies influenced decision-making on air-distribution strategies and hot or coldaisle containment strategies, with enhanced cooling control at higher density rack rows. STRUCTURAL HIGHLIGHTS The total project area is 186, 922 square feet, with an Interior Gross Area (IGA) of 157,880 square feet (first floor, excludes exterior wall), and fan decks spanning 29,122 square feet. Two new fan deck structures enable custom air-handling units to be stacked above electric rooms, taking advantage of the high-bay vertical space of the original warehouse structure and saving valuable data center floor space on the first floor. A three foot high raised access floor makes an under-floor air distribution and cooling system possible. A flexible strut-framing system built below the ceiling accommodates initial and future hanging of utility pathways (electrical power and voice/data cabling), which the original building s structure could not support. 3 MECHANICAL HIGHLIGHTS An energy-efficient HVAC cooling system combines water cooling and air cooling. The mechanical system design incorporates 7 HVAC units at 75,000 cubic feet per minute (CFM) each for the Data Center portion (with one N+1 redundant unit) and 12 HVAC units at 75,000 CFM each (with one N+1 redundant unit) for the Development Lab portion (at full build). Air cooling takes advantage of air-intake plenums at the perimeter of the building and air-side economizers to provide free cooling during months of cool weather an estimated 5,000 hours or 57 percent of the year. Chilled water and humidification control is provided by a pre-manufactured Central Unit Plant (CUP), which was fully assembled and factory tested offsite, then disassembled, shipped to the job site, and reassembled and commissioned. The CUP contains four new high efficiency centrifugal chillers rated at 1,300 tons each (full-build), with an efficiency rating of 0.51kW/ton. Sophisticated HVAC and electrical monitoring control systems incorporated into the design as an extension of EMC s current Data Center control systems enables remote monitoring from EMC global Command Centers. Cold aisle containment is provided for rack rows of higher load density (15kW/rack) in both the Data Center and the Development Lab portions of the facility and hot aisle/cold aisle rack row arrangements are used to increase cooling control and efficiency.
ELECTRICAL HIGHLIGHTS Initially, the new Data Center and Development Lab will deliver 100 watts/sf, which is expandable to 120 watts/sf by installing additional, modular, scalable, plug-in units (in a full build scenario). The total electrical load demand for this phase of the project is 11.5 MW. Two independent electricity feeds (totaling 25 MV) connect to the building from two separate local utility companies, with automatic switching to a standby source immediately upon loss of power from any primary source. Additional standby power is provided by three 2,000 kw diesel generators with the option to add a fourth generator when needed. Continuous power to the Data Center is provided by two 2N redundant uninterruptable power systems (UPS); each system contains three (expandable to four) 675 kw UPS modules utilizing flywheel technologies that eliminate the need for battery storage. A flexible power and data cabling infrastructure is provided from overhead track bus-way systems and cable trays. No power or data wiring is located below the raised access floor, which is designed for cooling air-flow only. Automatic lighting control systems also contribute to energy efficiency. ENVIRONMENTAL HIGHLIGHTS No systems or hardware will be relocated from the old data center to Durham. All applications and data will be migrated over the network using EMC tools and best practices. Air-intake plenums at the perimeter of the building and air-side economizers provide free cooling during months of cool weather approximately 5,000 hours per year. The air plenums also eliminate the need for windows, minimizing light pollution. Rainwater is collected from the roof and diverted to a storage tank, reducing water usage by more than 40 percent one inch of rain on the 450,000 square foot roof equals 280,000 gallons of water. UPS modules utilize flywheel technologies that eliminate the need for battery storage. Construction materials have a minimum of 10 percent recycled content including structural steel, door frames, metal studs, concrete, acoustical ceiling tiles, carpet, plywood, and solid surface countertops. A minimum of 20 percent of construction materials are manufactured locally. A minimum of 50 percent of the construction waste and demolition debris are diverted from landfills and incineration facilities and recycled back into the manufacturing process. An Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) management plan is in place to control pollutant sources during construction; a full building flush-out is planned before building occupation to minimize IAQ problems. CABLING HIGHLIGHTS Two separate underground pathways deliver voice and data telecommunications services to the facility. Each pathway terminates at one of two Main Communications Rooms (MCR) in the building for further redundancy. A 10-gigabit fiber optic distribution system will extend telecommunications services inside the facility into the Data Center and Development Lab, with network backbone extensions within those spaces. 4
EMC IT: THE JOURNEY TO THE CLOUD EMC Global IT supports more than 48,000 internal users; across 150 corporate offices; in more than 60 countries; spanning five data centers; hosting 500 applications and 8 petabytes (PB) of data. To reduce costs, improve services, and enable business innovation and competitive advantage, EMC IT embarked on a Journey to the Cloud to move from a physical to a virtualized IT infrastructure with more automated processes to deliver IT as a service (ITaaS). EMC s vision is to offer the entire IT stack as a service through on-demand self-service provisioning with metered usage for chargeback. As such, ITaaS capability spans server, storage, and network infrastructure; enterprise applications; databases; security services; virtual desktop services; and more with the ability to draw infrastructure- and software-as-a-service from a shared pool of virtual resources in EMC data centers and/or partner data centers across the globe. To share its hands-on experience, knowledge, and lessons learned, EMC introduced the EMC IT Proven program to chronicle its Journey to the Cloud. ACCELERATING THE CLOUD JOURNEY EMC IT had already begun its multi-year Journey to the Cloud transformation to deliver IT as a business-driven service, when it was faced with the necessity and opportunity to re-locate the company s corporate data center. This is accelerated the company s move to a virtual data center. The new data center will be 100-percent virtual, with a single virtual data center operating system VMware vsphere deployed on standard x86 enterprise architecture, leveraging the Vblock Infrastructure Platforms. EMC IT is also collaborating closely with the EMC Global Services organization and multiple solution partners inside and outside on its data center build and migration. Internal teams include infrastructure and data center migration consultants from EMC Consulting and EMC Technical Solutions Services professionals who work with EMC IT to determine architecture, network connectivity, storage, monitoring, and replication architectures, as well as migration plans. Outside partners include VCE coalition partners, Cisco and VMware, and other leading solution providers. To reduce the risks, costs, and timeframes associated with the data center migration, EMC IT has embraced server virtualization; storage optimization; backup and recovery; Infrastructure-as-a-Service; closed loop configuration management; and co-location and cross-domain staff training in a centralized Command Center. 5
To date, EMC IT has virtualized 75 percent of its data center OS images, as well as realized a 75 percent gain in storage and a 170 percent improvement in storage administration productivity. The organization has also reduced the number of Oracle database servers in its Westborough data center from 55 to four and the number of databases from 51 to six. By the end of 2010, EMC s cloud journey achieved a savings of $121.5 million, including an estimated $94.3 million in capital equipment cost avoidance, and $27.2 million in operating cost reduction due to data center power, cooling, and space efficiencies. EMC IT has also lowered energy consumption by 34 percent and reduced its carbon footprint by nearly 100 million pounds of CO 2. REFERENCES The following documents provide additional, relevant information. You can access these documents at www.emc.com/itproven or by contacting an EMC representative: EMC IT s Journey to the Private Cloud: A Practitioner s Guide EMC IT Blog at http://www.emc.com/emcit CONTACT US To learn more about how EMC products, services, and solutions help solve your business and IT challenges contact your local representative or authorized reseller or visit us at www.emc.com EMC 2, EMC, and the EMC logo, are registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Published in the USA. 05/2011 EMC Perspective H8734 EMC Corporation Hopkinton, Massachusetts 01748-9103 1-508-435-1000 In North America 1-866-464-7381 www.emc.com