Under the Dome, the Green Environmental Road of ChinaCache Shouming

The last night of February 2015 was destined to belong to Chai Jing.

Chai Jing’s documentary of Under the Dome has exploded the whole Chinese network, causing people to think what we can do for the environment and ecology we are living in while making comments in Weibo and WeChat. We, as the general public, can try our best to choose a green transportation means such as bus, subway, and bicycle, choose high-quality oil to reduce poisonous gas emission, have dust filtering devices equipped, file complaints to the Environmental Protection Bureau for improvement in case of environmental pollution.

For the data center industry of high energy consumption, what can we do to protect our environment and ecology?

In recent years, data center construction has shown a large-scale development trend, while the power consumption in a large data center is quite striking. For example, for a data center with the construction scale of 2,000 racks, based on the calculation of average power per rack of 3kW, the 2,000 racks will consume 6000-degree electricity, with yearly electricity consumption of 52,560,000 kWh, in addition to other energy consumptions from air conditioning, fresh air, electricity, and lighting in the data center. Huge energy consumption has brought great pressure on the data center in terms of operating cost and environmental protection. Therefore, data center construction is focusing more and more to energy saving, with Green, Environmental Protection, Energy Saving, and High Efficiency as the concept and direction for the construction of next generation of data centers.

How to measure the energy consumption of a data center?

PUE, short for Power Usage Effectiveness, is the indicator for data center energy efficiency evaluation, and the ratio of all the energy consumed in the data center and the energy consumed by IT loads. PUE is a ratio, with 2 as its benchmark. The closer the ratio is towards 1, the better energy efficiency level is. The PUE value has become internationally acknowledged measurement index for data center power usage effectiveness. At present, the advanced data center computer room PUE value in foreign countries is usually less than 2. According to MIIT statistics, at present, China's average data center PUE value is between 2.2 and 3.0. While ChinaCache’s Shouming Cloud Data Center in Shunyi Tianzhu Free Trade Zone is super large, with an area of 80,000 square meters, containing about 7,500 racks, its PUE design value from 1.44 to 1.50, with average PUE value of 1.46, fully in compliance with international leading Green Data Center Energy Efficiency Standard.

The energy consumption in a typical data center includes:

The first part is IT equipment, accounting for about 50% of the total energy consumption of the data center, including servers, storage equipment and network communication equipment, etc.;

The second part is air conditioning system, accounting for about 37% of the total energy consumption of the data center, with air conditioning cooling system accounting for about 25% of the total power consumption, and air conditioning air supply and return system accounting for about 12% of the total power consumption;

The third part is UPS power supply and distribution system, covering about 10% of the total energy consumption of the data center;

The last part is auxiliary lighting system.

The Green Data Center refers to maximum energy efficiency and minimum environmental impact that IT, cooling, lighting and electrical systems in the data center can achieve. The green concept is shown in the overall planning and computer room air conditioning, UPS, servers and other IT equipment, and management software application, with energy saving and environmental protection, high reliability and availability, and rationality. Since PUE = total data center equipment energy consumption/IT equipment energy consumption, a lowered PUE value can be obtained by adopting energy-saving measures to reduce equipment power consumption in the data center. Green and energy saving concept has been deeply considered at the beginning of design and construction of ChinaCache’s Shouming Cloud Data Center, and in strict accordance with the national data center construction standards and regulations.

ChinaCache Shouming Cloud Data Center, the domestic green data center model

For IT equipment energy consumption, hardware vendors at present have been constantly improving chip manufacturing technologies to reduce energy consumption. Therefore, under the condition of same performance, ChinaCache Shouming center chooses the equipment with strong heat dissipation capacity, small size, light weight, low noise and easy for standard rack installation. With the maturation and launching of virtualized cloud computing technologies, efficient power supplies, dynamic cooling, power intelligent management and "dynamic sleeping" equipment can also help to improve the data center’s IT utilization rate.

In terms of data center cooling, reasonable air conditioning configuration and the selection can save energy consumption to a certain level. For example, ChinaCache Shouming Center uses dual water-cooling system, through strict calculation to get optimum air conditioning allocation, integrate natural cooling technology and magnetic suspension centrifugal water-cooling system to greatly reduce the system’s energy consumption, with reasonable design for air supply and return system. In addition, independent temperature and humidity control system can reduce energy consumption too.

By using high frequency energy-saving UPS units, ChinaCache Shouming Center has improved power factors and efficiencies, thus providing high quality power supply for the IT equipment. IGBT uncontrolled rectifier link is used for rectifier part, improving AC current output waveform recovery rate, reducing total harmonic distortion rate, significantly improving conversion efficiency and reducing output loss, compared with ordinary equipment.

In the aspect of data center lighting, ChinaCache Shouming Center, with adherence to the principle of green environmental protection, has reasonably arranged lighting sources, chosen LED low-loss lighting tools and intelligent control methods to reduce the energy consumption of lighting.

At present, there are some good data center construction experiences in the world. Facebook's data center has achieved solar power, to solve power supply in part, and reduce carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion. Apple's data center in North Carolina has been fully implementing energy self-sufficiency with solar and biogas fuel power generation. The foreign data center pioneers have begun to explore new types of energy supply, and also become a reference for domestic data center construction.

Nowadays, with gradual transparency of information, enhancement of environmental protection awareness, continuous exploration of green energy-saving methods has become important for ChinaCache Shouming data center construction. What we are doing here is for IT development and ecological environment balance, for future’s sustainable development, and for our every breath. We hope the environment we are looking forward to can be realized by everyone’s small efforts.

"In spring, doors are open, with wind blowing in and color everywhere. Sometimes, you run into a rain, or touch a fog. You are tempted to have a deep breath. You can feel the taste of the rain, cold and fresh."

Beijing Federation of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives Cooperates with ChinaCache for Data Center Field

On Jan 16, Beijing Federation of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives (BJ Co-ops) and ChinaCache International Holdings Ltd. ("ChinaCache") hold a strategic cooperation signing ceremony in the conference center of Beijing Tianzhu Free Trade Zone. It was decided by both companies to develop their strategic cooperation in data center filed, start from Beijing and Guiyang.

In 2010, ChinaCache started planning to build Shouming International Data Center in Beijing Tianzhu Free Trade Zone, which was officially started for construction in 2014 and expected to be completed in July 2015 with a total construction area of 80,000 square meters. Upon completion, this center can accommodate more than 7,500 cabinets, as China's most competitive high-level large-sized cloud data center, and will mainly offer large-scaled customers with customized data centers and provide subsequent professional operation and maintenance.

During the period when ChinaCache was building its Shouming Center, BJ Co-ops was also actively seeking new business growth points, and making development plans of big data industry, with determination to take data center infrastructure as the breakthrough point, which matches the development direction and positioning of ChinaCache. After more than one year’s investigation, communication and argumentation, ChinaCache and BJ Co-ops both agreed on the development trend of domestic data center industry. On this basis, both companies signed a strategic cooperation agreement. Under the framework of the strategic cooperation, they reached a specific agreement for data centers in Beijing and Guiyang, including that BJ Co-ops will customize a data center in ChinaCache’s Shouming International Data Center with RMB 960 million, BJ Co-ops will delegate ChinaCache to run its data center resources in Beijing, and both companies will jointly invest and build a large-scale high-grade data center in Guiyang.

Founded in 1998, ChinaCache has been one of the earliest domestic high tech companies offering Internet services, with 30,000 clients around the globe, owning over 4T bandwidth core networks and 25,000 servers deployed in 110 cities in the world. ChinaCache has always been offering Internet acceleration and content delivery service to government, enterprises and consumers, leading the industry in the past dozen years. In 2010, ChinaCache made its debut on NASDAQ market, and began working on cloud computing and big data market deployment. Given its own advantages accumulated in the early period and market trends, ChinaCache finalized the data center – the infrastructure for cloud computing and big data - as key point, which also becomes a new growth point for ChinaCache in the future development.

BJ Co-ops is an affiliated unit to Beijing Municipal SASAC, with a long history. In recent years, through elaborate arrangement, BJ Co-ops has been progressive and initiative, developing several business sectors such as financial investment and commercial real estate development. It is known that BJ Co-ops has stock asset of about 11,000 acres of land and 3.4 million square meters building area currently in Beijing; it also has more than 20 financial business licenses and a professional financial services group, with private equity fund management companies, petty loan companies, pawn companies, guarantee companies, land consolidation companies, trust companies, and consulting services under the group. In this way, the choice of BJ Co-ops to enter the data center sector will be backed up by its rich land resources and strong investment and financing ability.

Mr. Wang Song, Founder, Chairman and CEO of ChinaCache, mentioned in the signing ceremony that:” with this strategic cooperation, both companies will set up an all-around consortium from land acquisition, financing, construction and development, marketing sales, to long-term operation, committed to constructing domestic high-grade, large-scale data center infrastructure and offering high-end clients at home and abroad with infrastructure service of cloud computing and big data.

This time, the two companies are working together to enter the data center industry, achieving a win-win situation. For ChinaCache, the financial operations and commercial development business of BJ Co-ops can give strong support in terms of capital, land and development to the construction, development and operation of ChinaCache Shouming Cloud Data Center support. And for BJ Co-ops, entering into a new territory will encounter all sorts of issues, and the cooperation with ChinaCache will help it to develop in a healthy and rapid way in the data center field.

ChinaCache Shouming Won 2014 China IDC Industry Green Data Center Award

On January 8, 2015, the 9th China IDC industry Annual Ceremony sponsored by China IDC Industry Annual Ceremony organizing committee was opened in Beijing National Convention Center. This conference, themed as “Big Change, New Ecology ", has attracted numerous telecom experts, senior government officials and Internet business elites in China and abroad. ChinaCache Shouming was invited to attend the conference, and Mr. Chen Changcheng, GM of ChinaCache Data Cloud Division, presented a speech of "Cloud Data Center, Starting from Shouming”. ChinaCache Shouming also won 2014 China IDC Industry Green Data Award, leading to widespread focus in the industry.

With the development of Internet and cloud computing, IDC industry is also developing in a more and more positive way. In 2014, China IDC companies have faced unprecedented opportunities. Green data center solutions of high efficiency and low energy consumption have become new favorites in the IDC market. Facing new opportunities and challenges, with rich and comprehensive experiences and capabilities from design, construction, to operation and maintenance, ChinaCache Shouming Cloud Data Center can provide customers with on-demand customized solutions, to help users solve problems which they may face at current, in medium term, and in the future, to build a flexible and efficient integration service platform for the users. 

Mr. Wang Song, founder, chairman and CEO of ChinaCache, introduced that ChinaCache Shouming has the world's leading experts and operation team. ChinaCache Shouming Cloud Data Center is one of the key platforms carrying ChinaCache’s Internet services. By having contact with a large number of great foreign Internet companies, ChinaCache deeply knows the development gas between domestic and foreign data center industries, dedicated to constructing and operating a top-class domestic data center, enabling domestic and foreign customers to have same service content and quality in China as in high-level data centers abroad.

Therefore, ChinaCache has independently developed and built the project of ChinaCache Shouming Cloud Data Center located in Beijing Shunyi Tianzhu Free Trade Zone. Since its civil construction, the project was designed and built to high-level data center standard. The center has a total construction area of more than 80,000 square meters, consisting of nine data center computer buildings and one awareness experience center, in reference to National Level A Computer-room Standard and the United States’ ANSI TIA - 942 - Tier 3 + / 4 standard, and also in accordance with MIIT’s Green Data Center Standard. The whole data center can accommodate 7,500 cabinets, to be completed fully in June, 2015, as Beijing’s most competitive high-level large-scaled data center. The center can guarantee ChinaCache’s powerful cloud service function by increasing computing and storage capacity, improving network transmission capacity and efficiency, strengthening safety, reliability and recoverability of data storage, and enhancing operation and maintenance capability.

At present, ChinaCache Shouming Cloud Data Center has fully completed its main structure and signed strategic cooperation agreements with many enterprises. In the future, ChinaCache Shouming Data Center will continue to build high-end data center projects, adhering to the innovation idea of "efficiency, intelligence and energy saving”, to create a new generation of high-end data center cluster of green, ecology, low carbon, and environmental protection, combine independently innovated cloud computing with traditional technology, and help customers to customize their exclusive services according to their business needs.