Christian Belady, the principal power and cooling architect for Microsoft Global Foundation Services, is leading his company’s race to achieve optimal power usage and efficiency at data centers. (Dan Schlatter/PSBJ Photo)

The technology industry watches closely each month to see how Microsoft, Yahoo and Google stack up in market share. Increasingly, however, the big online companies also compete over another measure: energy efficiency.

Their race to achieve the optimal “power usage effectiveness” shows just how much things have changed in data centers — the gigantic computing facilities that serve up the web mail, online storage and internet services we use every day.

“We don’t want to waste energy on anything except computation,” said Christian Belady, the principal power and cooling architect for Microsoft Global Foundation Services.

In the early days of the industry, data centers earned their reputation as power hogs because the big companies behind them paid more attention to speed, performance and reliability than they did to energy efficiency. Now, that appears to be changing. Microsoft and others are focused more than in the past on the environmental and financial costs of their energy usage.

Rob Bernard, Microsoft’s chief environmental strategist, cites as an example the detailed information the company can extract about its data centers.

“I can pull up a map and tell you how much carbon Hotmail is emitting, right now, while we sit here,” Bernard said. “That’s huge. Because once you have insight and visibility, then you can start to optimize.”

That flexibility lets the company match the demand for online services without overbuilding and wasting energy. The move toward a more modular approach also is expected to standardize the assembly of data centers to improve efficiency over time.

Better energy efficiency in data centers is one way Microsoft says it will try to reduce its overall environmental impact. In an internal memo last month, chief executive Steve Ballmer told employees that Microsoft wants to reduce that impact — measured as “carbon emissions per unit of revenue” — by at least 30 percent by 2012, as compared to its 2007 levels.

Based on Microsoft’s latest energy audits, its total carbon footprint for 2007 was 936,000 tons of CO2. The company says that number is higher than it reported in the past because it decided to buck the trend and count leased facilities, as well, in order to assess its impact more accurately.

Besides data centers, the number includes the impact of other physical facilities and travel. Microsoft declined to disclose publicly how much of the carbon footprint comes from its data centers. However, Bernard said, they are “a core focus in our footprint goals.”

Microsoft is hoping to reduce its data-center energy consumption by even more than the 30 percent companywide energy reduction goal. The data center target is in the realm of 50 percent to 60 percent. To achieve this goal, Microsoft has been taking a close look at its data center operations and questioning long-held assumptions, said Belady, the power and cooling architect.

For example, the company doesn’t believe temperature and humidity in data centers need to be as tightly controlled as the industry has long believed.

“The only reason it’s tight is to make it comfortable for humans,” Belady said.

As a result, Microsoft is looking to reduce or eliminate infrastructure such as chillers and cooling towers in its new data center facilities — relying when it can on more natural and environmentally friendly methods of cooling such as drawing in outside air.

The company also is distinguishing between the types of work a particular server is doing. If it’s mission critical, the company will still build in all the normal backups and redundancy. But in cases where that doesn’t matter as much, those types of precautions aren’t necessarily needed — a realization that can improve energy efficiency by eliminating infrastructure.

Bernard credits Debra Chrapaty, corporate vice president of Microsoft Global Foundation Services, for making energy and environmental efficiency a “key pillar” of the data center team’s objectives. A specially developed Microsoft program called Scry provides a detailed dashboard that lets data center managers monitor energy consumption and other measures.

At the industry level, fundamental improvements in computer servers have also helped by increasing the amount of output for every unit of energy consumed. And virtualization technology has made data centers more efficient by making individual servers more versatile.

Microsoft also is part of the trend toward more “modular” data centers, in which the computers are housed in big shipping containers that can be installed at a facility quickly when needed. Examples include the company’s existing Chicago data center. 

The location of data centers is also a key issue. For example, Microsoft says its Quincy, Wash., data center was designed to have minimal carbon emissions, geographically positioned to use hydropower as its primary energy source.

To be sure, data centers have earned their power-hungry reputation. An Environmental Protection Agency report estimated the data-center industry was responsible for about 1.5 percent of U.S. energy consumption in 2006. It predicted that the amount could nearly double by 2011.

More recently, the big data-center operators are waking up to new ways of improving energy efficiency, said Sara Patton, director of the NW Energy Coalition in Seattle.

“Suddenly I’m hearing from Google and from Microsoft that they’re interested and they’re doing things,” Patton said. “That’s good news, because these are really huge energy users. Just huge.”

The price of energy is a major factor behind that rising awareness. At the same time, the increasing importance of a company’s “green reputation” is another big reason, Patton said.

That’s one explanation for the rising focus on power usage effectiveness, or PUE, as it’s known. The ratio shows the amount of energy used for core computing and storage as compared to the energy needed for the ancillary infrastructure, such as cooling and backup. A perfect score of 1.0 would mean the facility is using all of its energy for computing. Anything above that reflects the extra energy used.

Microsoft says its current average global PUE is 1.6. In calculating the number, Microsoft says it’s more comprehensive than competitors because it counts the energy usage of the entire data center, including offices, and it looks at all its facilities, not just the newer facilities it has designed for maximum energy-efficiency.

Google has recently cited an average PUE around 1.2 in facilities it has designed. Microsoft has cited similar numbers for its containerized Chicago data center.

The Green Grid industry consortium has sought to standardize the reporting of PUE numbers, but efforts to make comparisons between companies miss the larger point, said Jon Haas of Intel, chairman of the Green Grid’s data center design workgroup.

The idea is to have “a PUE score that consistently gets better,” Haas said.

“People want to use that number to compare different data centers in different geographies doing different types of work,” he said. “The reality is that there’s so many subjective things that go into that, it’s not really practical. We really envision it as a metric you can use for continuous improvement in your own infrastructure.”

In more general terms, Microsoft says its power consumption is between 30 percent and 50 percent below the global industry average for traditional data centers.

Apart from energy consumption, Microsoft is trying to reduce the impact of data centers on the drinkable water supply, using recycled wastewater when possible for cooling.

Bernard, Microsoft’s environmental chief, says it’s important to look not just at the energy consumed by data centers but also at the pollution they prevent by nature of what they do. Bernard cited examples such as electronic documents replacing paper, and people using online conferencing to replace plane trips.

“Today I think the perception is that it’s a negative issue,” Bernard said of data centers. “We’re already showing that you can actually dramatically change the curve of power consumption.  Simultaneously, I think we’re showing as an industry that there’s lots of value that can come through data centers which offset other behaviors which are more polluting.”

CHECKING UP ON ROB BERNARD

Rob Bernard

Personal priorities: Lots of things have changed since we last checked in with Microsoft environmental chief Rob Bernard. But he’s still driving that old Volvo — for now, at least.

As noted in the first installment of this series, Bernard has decided to stick with his older car, and wait for a plug-in electric vehicle, because his calculations show the environmental impact of producing a new hybrid outweighs the benefits.

Since then, however, President Barack Obama has announced $2.4 billion in grants for electric vehicle development. And there has also been buzz about a three-wheeled hybrid-electric Vespa coming to the U.S., getting up to 170 miles per gallon.

“That definitely piqued my interest,” Bernard said.

2012 goals: But for Microsoft, the biggest environmental news in recent weeks was CEO Steve Ballmer’s release of an internal memo outlining green initiatives including a plan to reduce its carbon footprint by at least 30 percent by 2012, compared with 2007.

Ballmer had been criticized for not being more outspoken on environmental issues, particularly during this year’s Consumer Electronics Show keynote address.

Microsoft is reporting a new CO2 figure of 936,000 tons for 2007, up from its previous report of 550,000 tons. That’s because of a new energy audit that took into account facilities the company leases, in addition to those it owns. Although leased facilities aren’t required to be included in the number, Bernard said he felt it was an important step to take to be realistic about the company’s impact.

“In many cases we’re a large or dominant tenant,” Bernard said. “We should step up and make the hard decisions and the choices that will drive energy efficiency at those locations.”

Partnerships: Microsoft also has been entering more environmental partnerships, announcing in February that it would work with the United Nations Environmental Program on a variety of fronts, including new computer models and mapping solutions for environmental research.

Separately, Microsoft’s business software group released a new plug-in that gives companies a dashboard for tracking and analyzing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

Report card: On another front, Microsoft didn’t do as well. Greenpeace’s latest quarterly report on electronics manufacturers dinged the company for “failing to clarify how its recycling data is calculated.” At the same time, the group credited Microsoft for reporting its CO2 emissions from its operations.

Microsoft’s overall ranking from Greenpeace now stands at 2.7 out of a possible 10, reflecting toxic chemicals in its Xbox and Zune that can be dangerous when released into the environment. Microsoft has promised to phase out toxins. It’s not alone in needing to improve. Nintendo scored even lower in the Greenpeace report.