Syracuse University, with partners IBM and New York State, celebrated the construction of its new Green Data Center (GDC)—a showcase of world-class innovations in advanced energy-efficient information technology and building systems.

Announced in late May 2009, and constructed in just over six months, the $12.4 million, 12,000-square-foot facility (6,000 square feet of infrastructure space and 6,000 square feet of raised-floor data center space) uses an innovative on-site power generation system for electricity, heating and cooling, and incorporates IBM’s latest energy-efficient servers, computer-cooling technology and system management software.
SU will utilize the center as its primary computing facility. In addition, as part of the GDC project, IBM and SU intend to establish a GDC Analysis and Design Center in 2010 to offer research and analysis services for clients and others who want to build new energy efficient data centers or optimize the efficiency of current centers.

IBM has provided more than $5 million in equipment, design services and support to the GDC project, including supplying the power generation equipment, IBM BladeCenter, IBM Power 575 and IBM z10 servers, and a DS8300 storage device. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) contributed $2 million to the project. And Sen. $500,000 in additional funding has been approved by New York State.

Coupling new technology with new uses of existing technology, the innovations pioneered in the GDC will make advances in energy efficiency possible in data centers from downtown Manhattan to emerging nations.

“Together, IBM and Syracuse are tackling a significant problem—how to address the skyrocketing amount of energy used by today’s data centers, which is impacting businesses and institutions of all sizes,” says Vijay Lund, vice president for cross-IBM offerings in IBM’s Software Group. 

A typical data center uses up to 30 times more energy than a typical office building.

The SU GDC features an on-site electrical tri-generation system that uses natural gas-fueled microturbines to generate all the electricity for the center, and cooling for the computer servers. The center will be able to operate completely off-grid.

IBM and SU created a liquid cooling system that uses double-effect absorption chillers to convert the exhaust heat from the microturbines into chilled water to cool the data center’s servers and the cooling needs of an adjacent building. Server racks incorporate “cooling doors” that use chilled water to remove heat from each rack more efficiently than conventional room-cooling methods. Sensors will monitor server temperatures and usage to tailor the amount of cooling delivered to each server.

It also uses direct current (DC) power.

In a typical data center, alternating current (AC) electricity is delivered by a central power plant through the local utility’s electric grid, and then converted to DC to power the servers. This results in power loss. By directly generating DC power on site, transmission and conversion losses are eliminated.

When GDC becomes fully operational in January, it will use 50 percent less energy than a typical data center.

It is one of the world’s “greenest” computer centers.