The world’s power grids weren’t designed to assist hyperscale knowledge facilities and pervasive cloud companies, not to mention synthetic intelligence (AI) workloads. With AI workloads changing into extra commonplace and scaling at unprecedented charges, power grids are extra strained than ever earlier than.
“The general public cloud created a wave of change in how knowledge facilities are constructed and operated,” mentioned Vladimir Ester, CTO and Cofounder of ClusterPower, throughout a February 2024 panel dialogue on IT sustainability. “And up to now couple of years, we’re seeing the following revolution—which is being generated by AI deployments and, extra not too long ago, very large-scale Gen AI-related infrastructures.”
This AI revolution, he added, is contributing to the worldwide power disaster.
AI, which requires extra servers, storage, processing energy, and cooling than different varieties of workloads, has traditionally been thought-about at odds with sustainability. However progress is now being made on a number of ranges.
“There’s a have to change into extra sustainable and environment friendly at scales that weren’t attainable earlier than,” in keeping with Ester.
Guidelines and laws are being established which might be driving knowledge facilities to be extra power environment friendly and advance sustainability, and the computing platforms that gasoline these knowledge facilities are taking part in an lively function in enabling these enhancements.
Driving effectivity and sustainability at stakeholder, facility, and platform ranges
Aiming to be climate-neutral by 2050, the European Union (EU) is confronting the power disaster straight. EU requirements, necessities, and different initiatives—such because the EU Code of Conduct for Information Centres, the EU Vitality Effectivity Directive (EED), and EN 50600—are geared toward bettering power effectivity, lowering power consumption, and advancing sustainability.
Not solely are these laws compelling enterprises to rethink and revise their operations, however they’re additionally spurring innovation and new enterprise fashions.
ClusterPower, for instance, constructed the biggest knowledge middle facility in Romania with sustainability in thoughts. It’s the first in Southeastern Europe with twin Tier III certifications, and has its personal microgrid that produces power from fuel and hydrogen. The ability even recovers warmth generated from its know-how programs, which is then used to chill those self same programs through an modern course of. The information middle’s foundational computing infrastructure is constructed on Cisco UCS X-Sequence Modular System servers which, in keeping with inside testing, can assist:
- As much as 70% discount in complete footprint in comparison with earlier technology servers
- As much as 49% discount in complete energy consumption with M7 programs in comparison with M4 programs
- As much as 90% discount in {hardware} working prices
- As much as 72% discount in {hardware} upkeep prices
- As much as 75% discount in recurring software program assist prices*
Along with successful a number of awards associated to power effectivity and sustainability, the modularity of the UCS X-Sequence helps the efficiency, flexibility, and scalability Ester mentioned is required for as we speak’s workloads—in addition to tomorrow’s bigger, extra power-intensive workloads. And the multitenancy and microsegmentation capabilities of ClusterPower’s Cisco Software Centric Infrastructure (ACI)-based community are driving operational consistency and effectivity whereas sustaining isolation and safety of a number of consumer environments.
“Effectivity is extraordinarily vital. We try to do extra with much less and we have to optimize the price of our operations,” Ester mentioned throughout the panel dialogue. “The AI revolution and its challenges are additionally extraordinarily vital. It’s one factor to deploy a normal cloud or computing platform; it’s a very totally different factor so as to add a bunch of GPUs that have to be scaled shortly. My recommendation for many who are constructing new knowledge facilities can be to return to leaders like Cisco, Intel, and ClusterPower, and take a look at fashions which have already been deployed and validated by the trade earlier than leaping in and making investments.”
To study extra about ClusterPower’s knowledge middle and use of Cisco
UCS X-Sequence and Cisco ACI, learn the full case research.
*Cisco Networking Compute Govt Briefing Heart: X-Sequence Sustainability, January 2024
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