CIOIN

Mr. Sridhar Reddy

Chairman & Managing Director CtrlS.

Executive summary

See how CtrlS deployed water-based cooling solution at the Hyderabad data center, designing flow system at the lowest possible costs. CtrlS is now saving more than Rs.1.6crore every year from the current pilot implementation. Once this water cooled system is implemented across all their datacenters, the total savings would be more than Rs.20crore every year.

The Organization- CtrlS, a four-tier data center based in Hyderabad, installed a water-based cooling system six months ago. CtrlS is capable of handling over 20,000 racks in all major cities in India and is sponsored by the Pioneer Group and Och-Ziff Capital.

The Business Case-Over the last five years, the costs incurred to keep data centers cool has increased by 36 percent, from Rs.3.65 per unit to Rs.5 per unit. At the same time, the energy consumed by high-speed computing systems and high-density blade servers has also increased and so has the consequent generation of heat. Most companies resisted liquid cooling solutions at data centers because there were higher initial investments involved. But CtrlS grasped the need to switch to liquid-based cooling solutions that can use any liquid such as water, Freon, glycol anti-freeze mix or even liquid metals, effectively lowering the cooling cost by nearly 30 percent. It designed a water-based cooling system, in collaboration with Emerson that was instrumental in cutting energy costs.

The Project-Earlier, setting up a liquid cooling system was considered an elaborate process that involved laying pipes all across the devices. It was also often associated with risks due to leakage and damage if sources of water and electricity were close to each other. But in CtrlS, the condensers units are placed in close proximity to the indoor units but clearly outside the establishment, and at no point water enters the data center. Water is pumped from the cooling towers and a piping mechanism takes it to and fro the condenser and the cooled air pushed into the data centers through the indoor units. This was made possible as a result of a 'small innovation' with MNC Emerson Network Power India Pvt Ltd. CtrlS was able to smoothly shift to a water-based cooling system because of dual active cooling paths and redundant systems at the data centers.

The First Steps-With an initial investment of Rs.3.7crores in the pilot system, CtrlS used a technique- Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis to assess problems in models and prototypes and design flow system at the lowest costs. The liquid-cooling system used the variable air volume (VAV) concept to facilitate variable cooling requirements for high-density racks.  The system also required quality water for processing to avoid scaling in the pipeline and to increase its efficiency. So, it installed a state of art water treatment and chemical plant that ensured continuous access to quality water and eliminated any need for third party supply. The liquid cooling system also set up variable frequency drives (VFD) and balancing valves to adjust the cooling system to changing heat load requirements automatically.

The Benefits-The project is a part of Ctrl's Green technology initiative that will be saving more than Rs.1.6 Crore every year from the current pilot implementation at the Hyderabad data center. Once this water cooled system is implemented across all their datacenters, the total savings would be more than Rs. 20 crore every year. "With the new micro-condensation system, where we can customize cooling as per the actual load, we are seeing power savings of 30 percent. The benefits are visible within a month of the system becoming operational," says Mr. Sridhar Reddy, Chairman & Managing Director CtrlS. In fact, according to Gartner, if all the existing data centers in India deploy the liquid-based cooling system the cost savings on power consumption alone could be more than Rs.1400 crores by 2012.