It’s clear that the modern data center has become an absolute integral component of the business. This means that we’re more reliant on data center technologies, the services they provide, and the resources which help keep it all running. Administrators are tasked with operating an even more efficient infrastructure while still keeping costs down.
A high percentage of today’s data centers use water-based cooling methods. Although evaporative cooling, whether through traditional towers or “advanced” adiabatic cooling systems (aka swamp coolers), remains a highly effective cooling method, when you’re planning a new data center you may want to consider the impact of the weather and water availability on your decision. In this whitepaper from Compass Data Centers, we begin to understand the impacts of water-based cooling solutions, associated costs, and where real efficiencies can make positive impacts on the entire data center.
To better realize why the availability of water is so critical for many data centers, it’s important to understand just how much H2O the average water-based cooling data center actually uses.
- According to James Hamilton of Amazon, the average 1MW data center uses 17 million gallons of water annually, and usage only increases with size as a 15MW facility is estimated to use approximately 131 million gallons annually.
- No matter how you look at it, that’s a lot of water. In many instances, this seemingly insatiable desire for water is exacerbated by the qualifications for what is available.
- Since most facilities contract for water with their local facilities, they can receive only the treated version used by the rest of the community. This naturally adds cost to their overall water budget.
- Although “gray” (untreated) water is usable for most data centers (with a lot of expense and operations complexity at the data center to condition the water), it isn’t always available for use.
These kinds of water complexities have forced many data center shoppers to take a step back and really understand the kind of water they’re using and how it’ll impact their environment. Download this whitepaper today to learn how the use of water for either cooling or power, or both, in your data center is a consideration that should be given careful evaluation in businesses’ planning processes.
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