Spring Program 2013

Tuesday, June 4, 2013
7:00 am - 11:00 am

We had a large turnout for our Summer program on June 4^th at our new Sheraton Denver West venue. There were 4 keynote speakers sharing information on 3 different but relevant topics. Gary Cudmore, Principal of Deerns America gave a presentation on “Pre-fabricated and Modular Data Center Design”. Some of the benefits of pre-fabricated, containerized and modular data center design/construction approaches that Gary discussed were cost containment, speed of deployment and risk management. Gary was very thorough in his analysis of the pros and cons of these approaches including the traditional field built model.

Our next presentation was a case study: “The Measured Power Consumption of the Recently Completed NCAR Facility in Cheyenne” by Terry Autry, P.E., Senior Vice President of The RMH Group, Inc. and Gary New, Operations Manager of the NCAR / Wyoming Supercomputing Center. NCAR/Wyoming is home to the new “Yellowstone” water cooled super computer. Terry explained that the facility design focus was on energy efficiency with the cooling tower as the key to overall efficiency. Gary discussed the challenges that effect energy efficiency including computer load, MEP systems responsiveness, and weather.

The common thread of both presentations was energy efficiency and low actual PUE.

Scott Nahman, Senior IT Manager for the Global Systems Division of the Earth System Research Laboratory gave our final presentation: “The Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative with a NOAA Focus”. NOAA currently has approximately 284 data centers throughout the country. NOAA’s plan is to develop “core” enterprise data centers serving as landing pads. Landing pad locations will be determined by factors including PUE, virtualization and power capacity. There are 315 federal data centers that are targeted for closure out of 3133. The estimated savings is 2.4 billion dollars by 2015 if the consolidation efforts stay on track.

All presentations generated lively discussions and a lot of questions.