Perhaps this is apropos:
Linkname: Slashdot | Iceland Woos Data Centers As Power Costs Soar
URL: http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/08/03/29/2331218.shtml
On Sat, Mar 29, 2008 at 23:29:18PM -0400, Robert Boyle wrote:
>
> At 02:11 PM 3/29/2008, Alex Pilosov wrote:
> >Can someone please, pretty please with sugar on top, explain the point
> >behind high power density?
>
> More equipment in your existing space means more revenue and more profit.
>
> >Raw real estate is cheap (basically, nearly free). Increasing power
> >density per sqft will *not* decrease cost, beyond 100W/sqft, the real
> >estate costs are a tiny portion of total cost. Moving enough air to cool
> >400 (or, in your case, 2000) watts per square foot is *hard*.
>
> It depends on where you are located, but I understand what you are
> saying. However, the space is the cheap part. Installing the
> electrical power, switchgear, ATS gear, Gensets, UPS units, power
> distribution, cable/fiber distribution, connectivity to the
> datacenter, core and distribution routers/switches are all basically
> stepped incremental costs. If you can leverage the existing floor
> infrastructure then you maximize the return on your investment.
>
> >I've started to recently price things as "cost per square amp". (That is,
> >1A power, conditioned, delivered to the customer rack and cooled). Space
> >is really irrelevant - to me, as colo provider, whether I have 100A going
> >into a single rack or 5 racks, is irrelevant. In fact, my *costs*
> >(including real estate) are likely to be lower when the load is spread
> >over 5 racks. Similarly, to a customer, all they care about is getting
> >their gear online, and can care less whether it needs to be in 1 rack or
> >in 5 racks.
>
> I don't disagree with what you have written above, but if you can get
> 100A into all 5 racks (and cool it!), then you have five times the
> revenue with the same fixed infrastructure costs (with the exception
> of a bit more power, GenSet, UPS and cooling, but the rest of my
> costs stay the same.)
--
Henry Yen Aegis Information Systems, Inc.
Senior Systems Programmer Hicksville, New York
