Now that we’ve faced down the crises from our various storms these last two weeks, the team can again turn attention to the final elements of planning around the NCTD data center project.  Our current data center has an elevated floor and a standard office dropped ceiling; however, the physical constraints of the room prevented installing either of these at their recommended heights.  The raised floor is very shallow, and does not provide enough space to be utilized for air handling.  In fact, the primary original purpose of the raised floor was to allow for piping for the fire suppression system.

The floor has no routing or conduit for cabling, resulting in a haphazard approach to cabling in the room:  some racks have cabling in ad-hoc runs constructed above racks, while other systems have random cables under the floor.  This resulted in a relative rats’ nest of cables discovered as we temporarily relocated some of the systems this month. 

Originally we investigated re-using the raised floor; however, to accomnmodate the growth in equipment we desired to extend the room by 2.5 feet resulting in the need to procure raised flooring for another 50 sq ft.  The original manufacturer does not exist anymore, and the product was not something we were able to find on the open market.  I am frankly happy that we were unable to locate a suitable product to go with this system, as it is simply not ideal for our situation.

This work resulted in the team deciding to remove both the existing ceiling and flooring systems.  Our installation approach now is to instead install electrostatic dissipative (ESD) tiles on the subfloor, and a new dropped ceiling system that will provide for a more logical approach to cabling, air handling, and fire suppression.

My first stop in researching materials was again the US Green Building Council website, which described a program from the Resilient Floor Covering Institute(RFCI) called FloorScore.  Much like the scores provided around sustainable forestry processes, the RFCI FloorScore provides guidelines and a mechanism for an independent assessment (through Scientific Certification Systems) of the volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions from the materials.  Similar to the VOCs from paints, floor and ceiling tiles – and other industrial products – can come with a large VOC emissions load.  From both sustainability and worker comfort perspectives, choosing products with low VOCs are preferable where possible.

In addition to low VOC, we’re requiring that the selected products contain a substantial percentage of recycled or renewable materials.  We also would like to work with a company that will allow us to recycle all of the flooring and ceiling material from the existing room.

Surprisingly, there are now a wide variety of products on the market that will meet all of our needs, from ESD, to material composition, to recycling services.  My original fear that was in requiring the additional environmental criteria, we would be facing a substantial increase in the project cost.  However, that has not proven to be the case.  Instead we’ve discovered a wide array of companies that have embraced the need for these products and who are delivering a variety of choices to the marketplace.

We have selected a flooring product manufactured by Armstrong for our project.  Not only do these products meet all of the above criteria, but one of their manufacturing facilities is within 500 miles of the NCTD project site.

The purpose of this posting isn’t to market the specific product we’ve selected, but to instead point out that it was possible for us to impose additional purchasing criteria on the project, find products that met the criteria, and to do so in a manner that did not substantially increase our costs.

Our purchasing criteria included:

• Must meet all anti-static or static dissipative requirements for a data center
• Must contain at least 15% recycled materials (would prefer higher percentage)
• Must be FloorScore certified
• Desirable to be sourced within 500 miles of the project site
• Must have low VOC emissions

Dig Deeper

There are a wide array of manufacturers who provide flooring and ceiling products designed specifically to address both the needs of a data center and the environmental purchasing criteria we selected.  Rather than providing product links, instead I would encourage that people review the RFCI and USGBC sites for information about establishing the appropriate criteria for your project.

I spoke today with Bob Mobach – one of my technology gurus at Logicalis – about my concerns about the non-green generator.  After much discussion and research, we have again validated our decision to move forward with the generator.  He had some excellent insights about why we are in this position, and when some of the alternative technologies are more appropriate.

NCTD requires a high-availability environment now.  There is no getting around the fact that we run important, mission-critical systems on our infrastructure, and as such we can no longer afford to have unexpected and unplanned outages.  To meet this basic requirement, we must have the capability of creating power on-demand, nearly instantaneously should our power fail.  There simply are few choices on the market today to address this need for a facility of our size.

We could have taken the approach that we would provide our own ‘co-lo’ power via a set of natural gas generators.  This scenario would have allowed us to failover to SDG&E power should the natural gas units fail.  This option does not really make sense for our data center because firstly we’ve invested in solar pv power to offset the power demands, and secondly because our data center power draw is really too small to make this economical.  So from a business case, this is a poor choice for our scenario.

Another option was the fuel-cell based UPS.  The problem with this approach is simply the cost and the durability of the power.  We have had now two outages this year over 6 hours in duration.  There is simply no way we could sustain the entire data center on the fuel cells for this long.  And again, the business case is not there.

We are now investigating alternative fuel sources for the Kohler generator – either ‘clean diesel’ or biofuels.  While the biodiesel seems like a natural choice, the biggest issue is the long-term storage of the fuel.  Fuel that sits around for months can degrade due to algae or condensation.  Research indicates that not many entities are yet using biodiesel as their fuel choice for standby scenarios where the generator is not going to be used frequently.  So my next step is to contact the manufacturer to determine whether a biodiesel mix is appropriate in the generator, and what they would believe the ideal mix to contain.  We will then compare this to the emissions, performance, and price of ‘clean diesel.’

So while I am still not 100% reconciled that installing a generator is moving us in the right direction for a green data center, I am convinced that we’ve made the business decision which balances our environmental needs with our business realities.

This week we started investigating the LEED certification process and it was illuminating. For my data center project we only have two options for obtaining the certification- and both are frankly uphill battles.

The first option is for an interior commercial space. Our LEED consultant Brandon Smith believes we may be able to qualify under this program at a basic certified level. Our data center is part of a shared use space in the basement of our building. We lease out the third floor of our facility to at least three other companies. We also share a lunch room in the basement, and lease out another office in the basement to the same companies.

The data center is a separately-accessed space that is one small office on it’s own. I think this is our best shot at certification. Mr. Smith believes our project will garner 47 of the 100 possible points, which would put us right at the certified level.

Our other option is to pursue an Existing Facility Operations and Mainentance certification. This is a more rigorous review that would require us to change out our old whole-building air conditioning units. I cannot see how I can justify this large capital investment on the data center project alone.

We will investigate the possibility of the second certification as part of our larger sustainability plan.

There were some surprises in this evaluation:

• The rather large solar investment in the project- enough to offset 100% of the power needs of the data center – garnered us all of 1 point in the evaluation. The same as reusing our door.
• We received the bulk of our points because of the location of the site and the nature of our business. Being a public transit district and the free transit we offer out employees brought us 6 points. The thought is that commuters will generate a much larger carbon footprint than that of the data center itself.
• We receive no points for reusing the air conditioners. Even though they will be used infrequently in another part of the building, they clearly still pull a great deal of power.

Pursuing the second certification will require significant investment on our part- from changing the toilets and water fixtures, to the cleaning products we use, to changes in out parking lot. It will be an interesting process to determine whether these investments will make sense to our financially strapped organization.

And that brings us to the question of ROI. The certification process will probably cost around $7500 with fees and consulting hours. This is a very small cost on the overall project, but is equivalent to purchasing 3 servers. Will it return as much as 3 servers would? Is there a monetary value to LEED?