IBM win: University will invest in $12.4M green data center

Get this, someone is actually making a capital investment in a new data center! And, a green one at that.

We hear today that Syracuse University and New York State plan to use IBM to build a whopping 6,000-square-foot green data center that will use roughly 50 percent less energy than today's facilities. The project is worth $12.4 million, although IBM will pony up $5 million in equipment including the IBM BladeCenter, IBM Power 575 and IBM z10 hardware. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority plans to put $2 million into the project, according to a press release issued by IBM.

I was going to stick in an artist's rendering of the data center here but realized it was going to look like just another building, so I'll spare you.

It's what's inside that counts, of course. So, more details on that.

One key component of the new data center is an on-site electrical generation system, which will use a microturbine engine power by natural gas. This equipment will generate the electricity for both the computing hardware and the cooling. Speaking of cooling, IBM intends to use an "absorption chiller," which will take the heat created by the microturbine and change it into chilled water. The facility will also feature IBM's Rear Door Heat eXchanger technology, which are designed to decrease the amount of heat that the servers put out into the data center in the first place.

The organizations will use a direct current power distribution system within the facility, in order to avoid the conversion phase that normally occurs in many data centers today. (Electricity from the central power plant typically must be converted to DC in order to power servers.)

The project should be completed by the end of the year.