Data Center Goes to DC (Direct Current not the US Capital)

Yesterday, a consortium of researchers from the public and private sectors embarked on a real-world experiment to gauge whether large computing facilities can operate on less power if they cut alternating current (AC) out of the equation.

At the University of California, San Diego, engineers switched a set of servers in a campus data center to operate continuously on 380-volt direct current (DC) – as part of a project that allows researchers to track in great detail the energy savings that servers and data centers can hope to achieve through a variety of architectural and procedural efficiencies, including the use of DC power.

The experiment at UC San Diego is part of Project GreenLight, a National Science Foundation-funded initiative that has deployed a modular data center on campus with sensors and other instruments to measure the energy efficiency of information and communication technologies – and to help researchers build greener IT systems and software.

“The UC San Diego campus has made substantial investments for energy savings,” said Thomas A. DeFanti, principal investigator on Project GreenLight and a senior research scientist in the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2). “The switch to DC powering of servers holds great potential on a campus where supercomputers and other high-tech facilities represent a disproportionately large share of energy consumption."

It is estimated that companies could save billions of dollars each year in capital costs and ongoing energy savings by using all-DC distribution in their data centers.

“The coupling of renewable energy systems that generate DC power with large consumers of DC is the wave of the future for energy efficiency,” said Byron Washom, director of strategic energy initiatives at UC San Diego. “Our contracted 2.8 MW fuel cell that utilizes renewable methane gas will only occupy the land area of a tennis court, yet it produces more DC power than that required by the San Diego Supercomputer Center.”

Read the full story on the Calit2 Web site.

Check out the Calit2 Flikr photo stream.

Above photo caption: UCSD electrical technician flips the final switch on the GreenLight Instrument to convert two of its racks to DC-DC power.

Von Liebig and SleepServer in San Diego Business Journal

Monday was the third day of a three day weekend, and how many PCs in corporations, universities and other organizations were running on Monday even though the usual users were enjoying the holiday?

Monday was also the day the San Diego Business Journal ran a story describing the UC San Diego technology aimed at fixing these sorts of problems. SleepServer lets users put their enterprise PCs to sleep without the fear that they won't be able to access them remotely. The lightweight image of each sleeping PC can also run stripped down programs that enable the PC to work while it sleeps.

Check out the SleepServer story here on the SDBJ Web site.

Read the SleepServer press release from the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.

Learn more about SleepServer from Yuvraj Agarwal.

Yuvraj Agarwal photos on the Calit2 Flikr photostream. (Credit: UC San Diego / Erik Jepsen)

Technology Review ran a SleepServer story last week.

Update Thursday July 8: The La Jolla Light ran a SleepServer story "Research Report: PCs can work while they sleep."

SleepServer in Technology Review

The SleepServer project is profiled in a Technology Review story by Duncan Graham-Rowe.

Check it out...this is a follow up to the SleepServer team's presentation last week at the 2010 USENIX Annual Technical Conference in Boston. Check out a short summary on the Jacobs School blog, and the full press release here.

When a colleague saw the Jacobs School retweet of the Technology Review tweet of the story, she wrote: "wish i could work while I slept!"

PCs Sleep (and Work) Through the Night with SleepServer

Leaving your computer on all night/weekend/break just in case you need to connect remotely…that’s SO last decade. UC San Diego computer scientists created software that lets you put your computer to sleep without worrying that you’ll have to schlep your way to campus on Saturday night just because you suddenly need to access your computer connected to an enterprise network. SleepServer wakes up your sleeping PC remotely when you need it…but it won’t wake up the PC if the PC’s alter ego – a lightweight virtual image – can handle the job.

That’s the simplest example of how SleepServer helps UC San Diego cut its carbon footprint. But SleepServer does much more. That sleeping computer of yours also remains active on voice over IP/IM/peer-to-peer networks as well thanks to SleepServer.

How is this possible? When you put your computer to sleep, the software activates a lightweight virtual image of your PC which runs on a commodity server, along with hundreds of images of other PCs on your network. That virtual image can do a number of basic things that would otherwise require the actual PC to be awake.

SleepServer reduces energy consumption on enterprise PCs previously running 24/7 by an average of 60 percent, according to a new study presented today at the 2010 USENIX Annual Technical Conference.

Yuvraj Agarwal from UC San Diego is presenting this work TOMORROW June 25 in Boston at the 2010 USENIX Annual Technical Conference.

Read the story here.

More photos at this Jacobs School blog post.

Yuvraj Agarwal Photos

Photos below for the new story:
Enterprise PCs Work While They Sleep, Saving Energy and Money

Caption info for the graphs is available in the PDF of the SleepServer paper. The photo credit for any of the portraits of Yuvraj Agarwal is: UC San Diego / Erik Jepsen