The world’s energy grids were not designed to support hyperscale data centers and pervasive cloud services, let alone artificial intelligence ( AI ) workloads. Energy systems are more constrained than ever as AI tasks become more prevalent and scale at extraordinary prices.

” The common cloud created a wave of change in how data centers are built and operated”, said Vladimir Ester, CTO and Cofounder of ClusterPower, during a February 2024 board conversation on IT conservation. ” And in the past couple of years, we’re seeing the future revolution—which is being generated by AI operations and, more recently, quite large-scale Gen AI-related infrastructures”.

This Artificial revolution, he added, is contributing to the world energy crisis.

AI, which requires more machines, storage, processing energy, and chilling than other types of tasks, has historically been considered at conflict with conservation. However, there are now advancements being made on several degrees.

” There’s a need to become more sustainable and efficient at scales that were n’t possible before”, according to Ester.

The development of rules and regulations is advancing conservation and making them more energy efficient, and the technology platforms that power those data facilities are actively supporting these changes.

Driving efficiency and sustainability at customer, ability, and system levels

Aiming to be climate-neutral by 2050, the European Union ( EU) is confronting the energy crisis directly. EU standards, requirements, and other initiatives—such as the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres, the EU Energy Efficiency Directive ( EED), and EN 50600—are aimed at improving energy efficiency, reducing energy consumption, and advancing sustainability.

These laws not only require businesses to reevaluate and update their operations, but they also encourage innovation and the creation of novel business models.

ClusterPower, for instance, built the largest data center hospital in Romania with conservation in mind. It has its own grid that generates energy from gasoline and hydrogen, and it is the first in Southeastern Europe with double Tier III certifications. The facility also uses an innovative process to cool the facility’s technology systems, which heat is even recovered from. The information agency’s fundamental processing system is built on Cisco UCS X-Series Modular System servers which, according to internal testing, may help:

  • Total footprint reduced by up to 70 % in comparison to machines of the previous generation
  • Up to 49 % decrease in total energy intake with M7 methods compared to M4 techniques
  • Up to 90 % reduction in hardware operating costs
  • Cost savings of electronics repair up to 72 %
  • Up to 75 % less expensive software support visits are made annually *

In addition to winning many awards related to energy efficiency and sustainability, the flexibility of the UCS X-Series supports the performance, freedom, and flexibility Ester said is needed for yesterday’s workloads—as also as tomorrow’s larger, more power-intensive workloads. And ClusterPower’s Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI)-based community, which offers multitenancy and microsegmentation, is improving operational regularity and efficiency while ensuring protection for various client environments.

” Performance is extremely important. During the panel discussion, Ester stated that we want to do more with less and that we need to lower the cost of our activities. ” The Artificial revolution and its problems are also very significant. It’s one thing to build a public cloud or computing platform, but adding a number of GPUs that need to be scaled rapidly is another. I would advise those who are building fresh data centres to approach leaders like Cisco, Intel, and ClusterPower and examine models that have already been tested and verified by the sector before making any investments.

To learn more about ClusterPower’s information centre and use of Cisco

UCS X-Series and Cisco ACI, read the full situation study.

 

*Cisco Networking Compute Executive Briefing Center: X-Series Sustainability, January 2024

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