Data Center Lessons Learned

After two very successful launch events, the NM Technology Council (NMTC) returns to the Complex on Friday, March 13th for “Data Center Lessons Learned” with Intel Data Center Operations Manager Tom Greenbaum. Tom will describe Intel’s efforts to reduce costs and conserve resources, including finding new, more efficient ways of operating its data centers. He will describe through the process of designing a new data center while searching for green solutions. Space is limited, so please register at the NMTC website.

Intel’s data centers need to support the rapid growth in computing capacity required to design increasingly complex semiconductors. At the same time, the company is trying to minimize data center power consumption and operating costs.

“We are increasing data center efficiency and sharing our knowledge with other businesses,” Tom says. “We are helping the industry address areas where data centers consume power including power conversion and distribution, cooling, and even lighting.”

Tom will describe Intel’s pioneering innovations such as using air economizers to optimize power and cooling in their data centers. A typical data center may use 60 to 70 percent of data center power for cooling. One test at the Rio Rancho site showed an estimated data center power savings of 67 percent or a potential savings of $2.87 million for a 10 megawatt data center.

“Intel is lowering our power consumption with energy-efficient servers and power management strategies,” he says. “Intel is committed to the “greening” of data centers by blazing new trails in corporate social responsibility and sustainable information technology.”

Tom is Data Center Operations Manager for one of Intel’s few global hub data centers and is responsible for all Information Technology data center rooms on the Rio Rancho site. He supports the full range of IT customers including design engineering, office users, manufacturing and enterprise systems. Customer systems include disk storage arrays, tape backup, virtual server environments, mission critical servers, and large batch computing pools. In total, the IT data centers on the Rio Rancho site contain close to 7,000 servers.

The Rio Rancho global hub data center is among the largest of the Intel data centers world wide with unique advantages in power availability, high density floor space, and network capacity.The FB7 building houses the Encanto Supercomputer (left), which debuted as the third fastest in the world. RR1 data centers have high availability supported by redundant infrastructure and backup power generation.

The North Campus is the location for several data center innovation projects. In 2008 Tom was a key contributor on the team that won the prestigious Intel Innovation Award for the Air Economizer Proof-Of-Concept (POC). The Air Economizer POC received a lot of industry praise as leading the way towards reduced power consumption and Green Computing. Currently, Tom is Test Manager for the Container Data Center (CDC) Proof-Of-Concept which just started. The CDC is a one-of-a-kind mobile data center with potential big savings over data center construction and sustaining costs. Special uses include burst capacity and disaster recovery.

NMTC Luncheon Friday, March 13th
Data Center Lessons Learned
Speaker: Thomas Greenbaum
Location: Santa Fe Complex (map & directions here) 624 Agua Fria
Time: Check-in at 11:30; food served at 11:45; presentation at noon
Cost: $25 for NMTC members, $40 for non-members (individual membership is free!)