TECHNOLOGY
42
“ Data centers will need to implement every possible strategy to maximize their energy efficiency ”
— Brian Johnson , ABB
a leading role in that process , not only by designing increasingly efficient hardware , but also by driving the industry towards adopting a more circular economy .
With upgrade cycles getting shorter , as technologies like AI and high performance computing ( HPC ) drive data centre operators to regularly refit in order to increase density , the industry has a huge problem with e-waste . “ Hyperscale data centre operators are getting rid of thousands and thousands of used servers every year ,” says Helvie . Operators like Facebook , Google and Microsoft will discard thousands of racks with each successive upgrade cycle , which are growing shorter with each passing year . He adds that , “ Most of these servers leaving hyperscale data centres at the end of a hardware cycle are less than three years old .” One of the OCP ’ s member companies , ITRenew , has worked for years in the e-waste disposal space . “ Traditionally , they would remove a server from the system , disassemble it and move it into the secondary market ,” Helvie explains . " What they ’ ve started doing recently , in response to removing whole racks at a time from hyperscalers like Facebook , is use a team of engineers to sanitise and install new applications on a whole rack of servers for resale .” ITRenew then sells these racks to companies looking to reduce their carbon footprint . “ If you ’ re a company with emissions targets , buying second-user hardware is going to go a long way towards meeting those goals ,” he says . The possibilities for sustainable circular economic practice don ’ t stop there . In November , ITRenew partnered with Blockheating on a new project in Amsterdam . Using second-user servers recovered from a hyperscale facility , packaged into an edge-scale container unit and refitted with liquid cooling technology , excess heat .
The Netherlands is home to more than 3,700 hectares of commercial greenhouse space . According to Blockheating , the excess heat is
FEBRUARY 2021