Featured, Internet
Data Centers, Power Consumption, and Global Warming - Will the web crash?
Written by Tyler Shears on May 10, 2008 8:15 pm EST
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
So you’ve heard the hype on going green, wouldn’t you like to know how the internet fits into the big picture of saving energy? Every time you search Google you could power an 11-watt light bulb for an hour… Think that’s bad? Wait until you put that into perspective including sites like YouTube and every other bandwidth hog on the web…
So you now know one single Google search query consumes 2 to 8 watt-hours of energy. To put this on a scale, Google processes petabytes of information on a daily basis while indexing the web and doing other various things. If we average this out to 4.5 watt hours per query, and consider Google is easily handling 400 million queries a day based on comScore metrics, then we can see 1,800,000,000 (1.8 billion) watt-hours of energy being used daily just for basic search queries. The Google Complex itself uses the amount of power as 3,333 California homes.
If you’d dare to look at the bandwidth from a site like YouTube (making up over 10% of total internet bandwidth usage) and put into perspective how much power is required to simply run a search query versus serving up video content, the issue should become a bit more clear. Myspace, Facebook and the other networks sites of the like are also bandwidth hogs sharing robust amounts of digital media at high speeds.
And I digress…
How are we going to reduce the overall power consumption of the internet?
How are we going to reduce the overall heat consumption?
And do we really need to…
When a big company like Intel or Google refers to “greening” or “going green” with their server technologies the first step is finding a renewable or more efficient power source. Generally wind-power and biomass come to mind, but we’re going to need more than that to power the web as you can already see.
Right now there’s strong efforts by Intel and Google to start going green with their data center technology. Is this enough? I’m convinced that if the overall public keeps the pressure on going green and saving our environment that our technology will match pace and hopefully save the day… but in a less ideal world we’ve got bigger problems.
The amount of heat produced by these data centers is another intimidating issue we have to face… With the currently technology available we’re forced to use AC units and massive cooling centers to keep all of the servers at around 70 degrees or less. The hot air gets pumped out of the centers and usually outside, although some companies are finally using this excess heat to power office buildings and heat up pools in surrounding areas. Again, this is a good step and recycling is always ideal… but what about all this heat?
Shouldn’t the focus be on creating less heat rather than reusing the heat more effectively? A great deal of power used at these data centers is used in the cooling process alone, sometimes even more in cooling than actually running the servers. There’s a debate as to whether to use forced air cooling or liquid cooling, but either way you’re using a ton of power to cool off your servers. While it seems the big chip manufacturers are focusing on this, it becomes less pressing of an issue when you just find better ways to use the heat… but this is also a problem. 
WHAT ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING?
How is that going to effect the cooling of these servers? Imagine how much harder it is to cool your house in the middle of the summer as it is, what if everything was a few degrees warmer? Well multiply that feeling time 10,000 and that’s the kind of issues data centers face. If we don’t set the pace now and start making our top priority in reducing overall heat production in data centers, we may end up with data centers that can’t cool themselves. No data centers, no internet.
What do you think will happen?
(A few contrasting viewpoints can be found here, here, and here.)
Follow up to Go Green or Lose The Web? Servers will Crash, Will we make it?
Reference - Youtube Takes up 10% of Internet Bandwidth
Trackback URL for this post: http://www.gimmiethescoop.com/data-center-power-consumption-global-warming-will-the-web-crash/trackback
47 Responses to “Data Centers, Power Consumption, and Global Warming - Will the web crash?”
Leave a Reply
 Stumble it! |  Save This Page |
 | |
| |
Categories
Favorite Articles
Recent Comments
- wisdom commented on SEO for Enterprise - Five Ways to Maximize Organic Search
- RPO commented on 60 Years of Research Shows Why Germany Lost World War II
- Latex Santa commented on 60 Years of Research Shows Why Germany Lost World War II
- Cialis commented on 60 Years of Research Shows Why Germany Lost World War II
May 11th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
the aim is not to cut consumption in total, since that is fundamentally incompatible with being a successful business.
the aim is to cut the power per server, so that more servers can be run with the same resources - here the limiting resource is the finite total cooling power at a datacentre.
May 11th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Where do you come up with this bullshit? From where exactly did you get the figure 11 watt? No references, no links, no nothing. Just some moron guessing.
Datacenters that cant cool themself? Are you seriously retarded? The solution is just to not run the cpus as such high speeds and / or decrease the number of computers in that center.
May 11th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Oh, please. Save the scaremongering for the global warming idiots.
May 11th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Yeah, it doesn’t seem like any of these numbers are substantiated. I think someone is thriving off of sensationalism. I get so tired of this shit…
May 11th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Yeah this is not useful at all.
May 11th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
I’ve got to agree with “argh”. This article is useless as no references are cited, and readers are left to assume that the author has filled his article with unsubstantiated, bogus claims.
The article leaves me with the impression that the author has no idea how datacenters are designed, or exactly how much thought and calculation is involved in determining power and cooling requirements.
Give me a break.
May 11th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
What a crock. If this were true, Google would be using 1.8 gigawatts A DAY.
That sounds like it’s off by orders of magnitude.
May 11th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
ugh. fuck sake. more global warming crap? its all gunna happen day after tomorrow style - so I’ll search google until i cant anymore
May 11th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Well, global warming sells. The article attracted traffic only for that reason. I think it’s a sensationalistic, badly researched post
May 11th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Great, more global warming morons on Digg.
May 11th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
REMEMBER: Global Warming Is A Conspiracy, So Don’t Stop Googleing Until Its Proven!
May 11th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
And also… This post contradicts itself entirely by being on the front page of digg thong of the energy it is consuming to keep this site up and display it 40,000 times.
May 11th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
First off: Global warming is not an effect of heat creation. In fact to treat it that way, you would have to look at the entropy incurred in generation (about 60% more that useful energy you get) it is the SOURCE of the energy: fossil fuels + O2 == CO2 + H20
CO2 limits the amount of energy we radiate out into space.
I secondly don’t believe for a second that it takes anywhere near that much energy for a search. Just look at how much that would come to cost wise given google’s query rate . . . seriously.
Even if it did:
Perform 100 Searches an hour an be significantly below the amount of energy from the sun per square meter of earth: ~1300 W/m^2
And there are a lot of square meters on this Earth. For bonus learning look up Albedo! Argh!
Seriously, grow a brain the learn some thermo.
May 11th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Arcturus, check your math. 1.8 Gigawatt-hours per day = 75 Megawatts load (1,800,000,000/24=75,000,000) for approximately 30 data centers that’s 2.5 MW per data center. Roughly a 2500 amp, 480 volt service. That’s well within reason for a large datacenter.
May 11th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Contrary to what the article is claiming… that power is still being used whether or not you make any searches.
Then again, I could claim this website is causing coal to be burned for fuel every time they make an update.
WON’T YOU PLEASE THINK OF THE POOR COAL?!
Seriously, how much power do you think your hosting provider sucks up with the thousands of racks serving webpages for shitty sites like this one that don’t bother to fully grasp that -everything- takes energy.
Are you hosting in a green data center? No? Then STFU.
May 11th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
This is the stupidest article ever seen, you just wasted my time.
May 11th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
What a waste of time
May 11th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Personally, I think this is pure genius. I mean, really, absolute pure genius. Google is just on board with all the rest of em trying to burn the planet to a deep fried crispy hunk of dirt. Screw Google!
Yeah! And you wanna know what’s more?! Screw Santa! Do you have any idea how much energy it takes to get an entire fleet of thos poor oppressed reindeer to fly? Any right up near the ozone itself! Might as well just hold a giant flying can of hairspray and a lighter up their and burn it all off in one shot!
And what about breathing?! Do you have ANY idea how much carbon dioxide we produce when we breath as a collective unit!? I propose a ban. If each one of us could just commit to not breathe for one day, then we would reduce our collective carbon footprint, unless of course we all purchase carbon offsets, which will heal the earth by building windmills.
Seriously though, I’m all for being green, but only because it just makes good sense to take care of the place we live, not because I’m worried that I’m going to set the sky on fire. Global warming hysteria and this kind of alarmist, unsubstantiated, fear-mongering makes good stewardship of the earth look like some sort of chicken-little syndrome.
May 11th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
You forgot the fact that most data centers use diesel powered generators for backup power which have to be audited on a regular basis.
The act of just having your photos stored on flickr or your Facebook profile consumes energy. Your data is not stored in a single disk but probably in multiple disks served up by multiple cluster nodes behind various load balancers and through multiple network routes.
May 11th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Google is taking extensive steps to reduce their environmental footprint. They use the steam from their data center to power turbines to provide more energy for their data center. You’re really bashing them for nothing, and you’ve proved yourself to be a real Al Gore-esque scaremonger who didn’t do much research.
May 11th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
Why not use the heat with an industrial strength thermal compressor and use the system to drive turbines?
May 11th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
bitch all you want, both those for and against this article, and remember y’all do jack shit
May 11th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
I noticed you didn’t mention microsoft, whose datacenters always have been green.
May 11th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
So What, Global warming is a crock.
May 11th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Bullshit. Show some stats beyond idiotic reference; research sources; something?
Tell us - how did you determine your #s?
It’s idiots like you who are responsible for the shit we live in. Show this to 7 of 10 people and they are idiotic enough to believe it; and will then start to engage in truly disruptive behaviors.
May 11th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
Look i’m tired of this global warming bs. So why doesn’t everyone look it up and realize that its the sun thats warming up the planet. This global warming is a scam trying to get us to be taxed into the hillary/algore carbon trading system aka tax you to death!
May 11th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
that picture over there ….. does that smoke come out of the google datacentres ???
ha …. ha ….
May 11th, 2008 at 11:46 pm
Oh Oh cmon wank on ur 11w energy u dumb american stupid fucker. Maybe you should make a genocide their and kill 3/4d of your degenerated country, the energy wouldn’t be a problem thereafter. Some ass must write crap about this to get bigger epenis, and how much energy did u use in the progress asswipe?
go fuck yourself, you are too dumb to live
May 12th, 2008 at 12:05 am
@ Anonymous (”Arcturus, check your math. 1.8 Gigawatt-hours per day = 75 Megawatts load (1,800,000,000/24=75,000,000) for approximately 30 data centers that’s 2.5 MW per data center. Roughly a 2500 amp, 480 volt service. That’s well within reason for a large datacenter.”)
That’s per day. Do double check with the CIA Factbook (arguably one of the most comprehensive and accurate resources for international fact-checking), and you’ll find that the entire US consumes just under 4 trillion kWh. This includes absolutely every sector of residential right through to heavy industry.
I agree that the original author needs to provide references.
May 12th, 2008 at 12:31 am
google and youtube are the same company. why do u not include youtube in google’s totals?
May 12th, 2008 at 1:57 am
oh shit
May 12th, 2008 at 3:14 am
You fucking faggot, google offsets its power consumption with support for green energy and solar panels..
Fuck me dead some niggers are stupid.
May 12th, 2008 at 4:08 am
Barrel roll plz….
May 12th, 2008 at 5:55 am
please do something for this
May 12th, 2008 at 7:48 am
Well, as long as Myfag and pornotube stays online, i couldn’t care less.
Really tho, *insert obserd statement*…source?
May 12th, 2008 at 9:05 am
first of every user SHARES the amount of electricity used by that system to stay running… there for this whole this is full of S*$#.
May 12th, 2008 at 10:02 am
Its small scale right now, but at Kell we are trying to solve these issues by doing away with computer rooms completely. Google, YouTube et al are a massive chunk of the problem, ok, but all the bits inbetween are smaller scale and within reach. Have a look at the idea - see what ideas it gives YOU. http://www.kellsystems.com
May 12th, 2008 at 11:47 am
I work in a data center and I can tell you we use a ton of power. We do not host anything near the size of google but the power we use to run the servers and the cooling is huge. An electric bill can run us upwards of 400-500 thousand dollars a month just for our chunk of rented space.
May 13th, 2008 at 12:56 am
You are a dumb enviro-fag. Kill yourself to save the planet!
May 13th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Well one solution for cooling data centers is to build them under ground. I think at 6+ feet the temperature is a constant 50 degrees Fahrenheit. You might loose during the winter (depending on where you have the data center located) but you would definitely come out ahead during the summer. Of course not all parts of the US allow for this and building under ground is, I’m sure, a good bit more expensive.
May 14th, 2008 at 11:44 am
You Hippies make me soo mad… This story Is ridiculous, QUIT complaining, read my COUNTER-POINT here
http://www.y2kers.com/2008/05/data-centers-take-too-much-power-i-hate-tree-huggin-hippys/
May 16th, 2008 at 5:48 am
Whatever happened to Google switching over to Solar power? That was meant to generate 1.6 megawatts of energy and would sort out any green concerns?
http://www.firetop.co.uk/2006/10/18/google-enters-the-energy-business/
May 16th, 2008 at 9:48 am
yes, datacenters consume a large amount of energy, but that’s more than offset by the resulting economic efficiencies. For example, how many lightbulbs’ worth of energy would it take to drive to the library to find out that same piece of information?
May 16th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
That figure is insane. Where did you get it from?
If every single query took as little as 2 Wh = 7200 J and a search takes 0.07 seconds (as stated by Google), then the server processor must have been working at 103 kW, which is about the power of a medium-sized car engine.
Also, heat dissapation from human activities doesn’t cause global warming. Carbon dioxide emissions do. And bandwidth usage doesn’t have anything to do with power consumption.
This article is totally clueless on several accounts.
May 16th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
“Also, heat dissapation from human activities doesn’t cause global warming. Carbon dioxide emissions do.”
+ methane & other greenhouse gasses…
May 25th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
I say we grab our best looking women & start a small intelligent race on the moon. I belive myself & shears should head the group seo space invaders & protect the human race.
June 22nd, 2008 at 7:03 pm
[...] of saving energy? Every time you search google you could power an 11-watt light bulb for an hour??http://www.gimmiethescoop.com/data-center-power-consumption-global-warming-will-the-web-crashGoogle crashes for 90 minutes in Germany ? Better Than Therapy …Mar 6, 2008 … This afternoon, [...]