Data centres (DCs) account for 23 per cent of total power consumed by the ICT (infocomm technology) industry globally.
Research shows that one data centre server is required for every 300 smart phones and every 100 tablets and in 2015, enterprise DC requirements would be 600 per cent more than the level reached in 2010.
These and other interesting statistics were discussed at the inaugural Asia-Pacific Datacenter Leadership Council session held last week at Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands Casino & Resort. The event was organised jointly by IT research agency IDC and Samsung.
CIOs (chief information officers) from seven countries – Australia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand – were present at the conference.
During the conference, Samsung highlighted its Green Memory solution portfolio.
The portfolio comprises its double data rate-3 module and solid state drives (SSDs). The company said these deliver 34 per cent power savings for server systems.
‘It is very exciting,’ David Fosberg, VP for Samsung Asia, said. ‘We are the first memory company in the industry to come out with this voltage level. The design, shrinking nanometres, and lower voltage deliver supreme efficiency at the memory level. The good thing is there is no trade-off in performance.’
Samsung plans to begin mass producing the modules in densities of four, eight, and 16 gigabytes, after they are qualified with OEMs (original equipment makers), a process estimated to take three to six months.
The price of four Samsung SSDs is equivalent to the cost of 12 hard disk drives (HDDs), with improved efficiency and reduced power costs.
‘This means that the SSD is about two to three times the price of a traditional HDD,’ he said.
Mr Fosberg noted that cloud computing is a great opportunity where cloud providers will create virtualised machines on the cloud.
‘At the moment, most organisations are trying to figure out what the cloud is and whether it is right for them. There is a little bit of fear of relinquishing control out into the cloud. There is also excitement because of perceived benefits and cost savings.’
The bottleneck in a highly virtualised environment is memory, associated with performance and power benefits, he noted.
Noting that Samsung was the first to introduce green technology in the industry, he added: ‘Market share will take care of itself as long as we keep innovating and continue conversations with market leaders.’
At the inaugural Datacenter Leadership Council session, Lim Wei Wah, head, Asia IT infrastructure services, Microsoft Operations, recounted what happened in Japan during the earthquake and tsunami in March this year.
‘We had diesel generators which, in two hours, consumed 7,000 litres of diesel. Our data centres also faced thermal challenges during summer – they had to withstand high thermal conditions and at the same time, bring these down to a manageable level.
‘Apart from server platform design, we worked with our OEM to select the Samsung memory for server configuration, reducing our memory power consumption rate from 33 per cent to 15 per cent,’ Mr Lim said.
