DOE Data Center Energy Practitioner (DCEP) Training and Certificate Exam

The Department of Energy, in collaboration with the 7x24 Exchange, is proud to host a DCEP Generalist training workshop and certification exam program in conjunction with 7x24 Spring Conference. The DOE Save Energy Now program has partnered with the industry to develop a process leading to practitioners qualified to evaluate the energy status and efficiency opportunities in data centers. The DCEP Program is driven by the fact that significant knowledge, training and skills are required to perform accurate energy assessments. Target groups for participating included employees of property management companies, engineering consulting firms, service companies, data center end users, energy agencies, colleges, and utility company representatives.

Important!

As a special benefit to attendees, the 7x24 Exchange has agreed to waive the $700 dollar training and testing fee for all registered conference attendees however, the DOE has established minimum experience and educational criteria that must be met to participate in the workshop. All attendees must complete a qualification form and be pre-approved prior to the event. Additional information including the Program Description, Training Agenda, and Qualification Criteria can be accessed using the links below.

view session description | view session agenda

Please note that space will be limited and qualified attendees will be selected on a first come, first serve basis. We encourage you to REGISTER EARLY! Please make sure to check the DCEP Training box on your conference registration form to receive your DCEP program qualification application.

Presenter:
Magnus K. Herrlin, Ph.D., CEM, Lead DCEP, ANCIS Incorporated

Associate Presenter: David Schirmacher, Chief Strategy Officer, FieldView Solutions and, Vice President, 7x24 Exchange International

CONFERENCE KEYNOTE:
"Green Gold Rush - A Vision for Energy Independence, Jobs, and National Wealth"

The creation of a green economy is an increasingly promising solution to multiple challenges. Sustainable business and energy independence are keys to our economic revitalization, according to Kennedy. America can boost its own infrastructure by powering industry with plentiful and domestic renewable resources. A sophisticated, well-crafted energy policy will help sharpen American competitiveness while reducing energy costs and our national debt. Intelligent energy policy is also the national fulcrum for US foreign policy and national security. From green jobs and technologies to weaning our reliance on carbon energy, Kennedy offers a bold vision to restore US economic might, safeguard our environment, and reestablish America's role as an exemplary nation.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Visionary, Environmental Business Leader and Advocate

eBay - Data Center Goes Gold

In May 2010, eBay officially opened its newest data center in South Jordan, Utah, named Topaz after the state stone of Utah. The facility was a green field development focusing on the design principles of reliability, maintainability, sustainability, and efficiency. As a result of the design and construction efforts, the facility achieved a LEED Gold rating in October of 2010.

Michael Lewis, Director Mission Critical Engineering, eBay
Stephen Spinazzola, Vice President, RTKL Associates Inc.

NASA - The Influence of Solar Flares and Solar Storms: Why We Should Care About Space Weather

The Sun produces solar storms in the form of intense radiation and fast moving material. These storms can interact with the Earth to create electric currents in our atmosphere. The study of space weather developed to predict solar storms and understand their impact on our technology. The world's electrical grids-that fundamental technology enabling modern society-are vulnerable to these currents. While most days the sun's impacts are minimal, large solar storms have the potential to have a devastating impact on mission critical systems. This talk will present an overview of Space Weather to help your business begin to prepare for worst-case scenarios.

C. Alex Young, Ph.D., Solar Astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center with ADNET Systems Inc. and the SOHO/STEREO Science Team

Economic and Environmental Value in Business Computing

The Green Grid is becoming the global authority on resource efficient data centers and business computing environments, and has developed a number of resources that help to quantify the business value of efficient ICT equipment. This session will include materials from The Green Grid's recent technical and business projects, including business case studies from member companies, new tools like The Green Grid Data Center Maturity Model, and the international importance new sustainability metrics such as Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE) and Carbon Usage Effectiveness (CUE).

Mark A. Monroe, Executive Director, The Green Grid

Breakout A: Data Center Cabling - Transitioning From Copper to Fiber

This short course is intended to help data center and network managers understand the value proposition of an all-optical data center. Topics that will be discussed include looking at basic data center network infrastructure design and hardware needs. The course was developed with the TIA-942, Telecommunications Infrastructure Standard for Data Centers in mind, but will also address the fact that many data centers really have not used this standard in practice. Networking standards such as IEEE 802.3, Fibre Channel, iSCSI and InfiniBand will be reviewed along with their applicability to certain aspects of the data center. Technology roadmaps and data center networking trends will be included as well as how to handle transitioning from lower to higher data rates within your data center. When it makes sense to implement fiber optics and what types of transceivers and cabling should be used for different scenarios will be presented. Other technologies such as Fibre Channel over Ethernet, RDMA (InfiniBand) over Converged Ethernet, IO virtualization and how virtualization and network consolidation will affect data rates will also be discussed. Detailed cost analysis of fiber versus copper in the data center will be presented considering not only equipment and infrastructure cost, but potential staff, port and cabling density, power and cooling costs. Also included will be analysis of whether it matters what vertical market a data center supports - for example, does a financial sector data center have different requirements than a higher-education data center? Several real-world case studies will be presented.

Lisa A. Huff, Chief Technology Analyst, DataCenterStocks.com

Breakout B: Minimizing Common Downtime Risks in Critical Facilities

Presentation will define and substantiate the most common downtime causes for data center facilities systems - by specific types of human error. Data center owners will be provided strategies to minimize these risks, drawing on best practices from other critical industries as well as from the those at the most successful data center operations.

David Boston, President, David Boston Consulting

Brakout C: Upgrading a DC Capacity in a Live Environment

The goal of the presentation is to show attendees the steps required to upgrade an existing DC from 200W/SF to close to 400W/SF while in operation without affecting the customer.

Michael Chartier will cover the technical aspect of the presentation from the site survey to the final drawings and site supervision while Mr. Heimann will cover the operation side of the presentation on what is to be expected and what to do to prevent issues and avoiding shut-down of any server.

The presentation will include photographs and work sequences and will show that it is possible to work in a live environment without having to shutdown a single server.

Michel Chartier, President, Kelvin Emtech

KEYNOTE: Yahoo - Right Place. Right Way. Right Cost: Evolving Efficiency in Data Factory Design & Operations

During this session, Scott will be presenting 5 "small plate" topics involving Yahoo!'s most recent activities in the areas of data center design, construction and operations, including:

1. "We love NY, and other strategic places" - How strategic site selection and highly efficient data factory design & construction saves us money. Can it do the same for you?
2. "It's Not the Peak, It's the Slope" - Defining and tuning the PUE curve.
3. "Separating the "Pre" from "Construction" - Making preconstruction activities more pre-emptive in order to save more time and money.
4. "Is your UPS battery as good as your iPhones?" - Battery technology has advanced greatly along with the newest high efficiency electric cars and mobile devices. Are our UPS systems getting the same love?
5. "Yahoo's Flex Tier Data Center Design" - Outside and between the Uptime Institute boxes. Introducing Yahoo's next generation design.

Scott Noteboom, Vice President, Operations, Yahoo!

Uptime - Data Center Issues: Past, Present, and Phuture

Are the issues of the future really different? Or are they variations of the same old stories? Will those who do not learn from the past be forced to relive it, or is history even relevant? This presentation shares summary research of industry leaders about where the industry has been, and builds on that foundation to discuss present and future issues.

W. Pitt Turner IV, PE, Executive Director, Uptime Institute, LLC

DOE Data Center Energy Practitioner (DCEP) Program: June 2011 Progress Report

The data center industry and DOE have partnered to develop a certificate process leading to energy practitioners qualified to evaluate the energy status and efficiency opportunities in data centers. The key objective is to raise the standards of those involved in energy assessments to accelerate energy savings in the dynamic and energy-intensive marketplace of data centers. The practitioners are trained to provide a consistent approach through system-level energy assessments. They have documented knowledge and skills including proficiency in the use of the DC Pro Software Tool Suite. Target groups for participating in the program include data center personnel (in-house expertise) and consulting professionals (for-fee consulting). After a number of pilot training events in 2010 and 2011, the program will be offered world-wide in 2011. This presentation provides a brief overview and progress report on the DCEP program.

Magnus K. Herrlin, Ph.D., CEM, Lead DCEP, ANCIS Incorporated

UPS - Open Heart Surgery on the World's First Tier IV Data Center

The United Parcel Service Windward Data Center near Atlanta is recognized by The Uptime Institute as the first Tier IV data center. Completed in 1995, it features System + System power and cooling infrastructure. In 2010, United Parcel Service recognized the need to replace its critical power infrastructure and add continuous cooling, with no downtime for the critical computing load. Team members from United Parcel Service, Holder Construction and Syska Hennessy Group discuss the challenges encountered and overcome in performing open heart surgery on the World's First Tier IV Data Center.

Moderator:
Christopher M. Johnston, PE, Chief Engineer, Senior Vice President, Syska Hennessy Group

Panel:
Miguel Flores, Data Center Facilities Manager, United Parcel Service, Inc.
C. Benjamin Swanson, Managing Director Mission Critical Facilities, United Parcel Service, Inc.
Christopher Mann, PE, Senior Associate, Syska Hennessey
Tony TeVault, Vice President, MEP Services, Holder Construction Company

Breakout A: Stop Sacrificing High Efficiency for Reliability

Predictable. Expected. Certain. These are boring terms to the laymen, but to datacenter operators who oversee mission critical data and tasked with 24x7 uptime, these words are crucial. All datacenters, large or small, require continuous power that is typically provided with a combination of an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) and a diesel generator. In the past, UPS systems have been dependent on big banks of lead acid batteries for bridging to backup power generation. But due to the chemical makeup of batteries, reliability comes into question. For example, it's challenging to capture an accurate, real time snapshot of the health and status of the UPS battery system.

With efforts being made by design/build firms to make datacenters greener, alternative UPS technologies are available with higher energy efficiencies and are more reliable than conventional battery systems. In particular, UPS systems that utilize flywheel energy storage can operate at higher efficiencies meaning less consumption from the grid meaning less fossil fuel production, ultimately leading to displacement of CO2 emissions.

Martin Olsen, Vice President, Active Power

Breakout B: Case Study - Eradicating Human Error: Lessons Learned from the US Nuclear Navy

Human error continues to be cited as a leading cause of data center downtime. The goal of eradicating this blight from the data center can be advanced by studying the US Nuclear Navy. In fact, the similarities between a mission critical data center and a mission critical nuclear propulsion plant are striking and many. This presentation will demonstrate the operational methodologies utilized by the US Nuclear Navy to reduce human error drawing comparison to a modern day data center every step of the way.

Domenic Alcaro, Vice President, Enterprise Sales, Schneider Electric

Breakout C: Data Center Efficiency with Higher Ambient

In a typical datacenter, 40-60% of the total power is consumed by the cooling system. In addition, cooling system efficiency has a first order effect on the useful lifespan of the data center. This study will show that one could reduce the total cost of ownership and maximize data center lifespan by optimizing the datacenter cooling budget and server power increase while ensuring no performance loss at increased ambient conditions. This is accomplished by basing control and optimization of the cooling system on real-time, server-level thermal performance data. This data is generated by new thermal instrumentation that is embedded in servers at no additional BOM costs and without the need for external sensors.

Charles Rego, Chief Data Center Architect, Intel Corporation
Sherman Ikemoto, General Manager, Future Facilities

University of Chicago - What's Old is New Again: Integrating a High-Density Data Center into a Historic Building

Representatives from the University of Chicago, AEI and Gilbane will provide an inside look at the challenges of integrating a high-density data center into an existing historic building - all while the building remained fully operational. The University's new 6,400-square-foot data center project is slated for Tier II classification with the potential to upgrade to Tier III.

The existing infrastructure to the historical facility required intricate renovation to meet the data center's intense power requirements and necessary cooling load. The center also included extensive site work and tie-ins to the University's power supply and chilled water lines to ensure optimal operation.

Raymond Parpart, Assistant Director, Data Center Operations, University of Chicago
Kyle Merril, Project Executive, Gilbane
Ronald Johanning, Lead Engineer, Affiliated Engineers, Inc.

KEYNOTE: Wells Fargo - End User's Perspective on Successfully Navigating Data Center Emerging Trends

This presentation offers an end-user's perspective on emerging trends in the design and operations of an organizations most critical facilities. From the likely long-term impact of cloud computing, virtualization, higher cabinet densities, modular designs, capital costs, sustainability, this session offers insight on these trends and how to successfully navigate through the competing challenges.

Bob Cashner, SVP - Corporate Properties Group, Wells Fargo Bank

Pros & Cons of Modular Data Centers

Over the past four years, we have all seen the rise of modular and containerized data center solutions throughout the industry. These solutions are presented in a host of deliverables. Some of them are comprehensive, such as turnkey modular building solutions; while some are infrastructure or IT adjuncts to traditionally-constructed facilities. No one will deny that modular and containerized solutions now have a prominent place in both product placement and utilization. What we don't have is an honest and unbiased opinion about implementing these systems. This presentation will present the pros and cons of three areas in this business: The Manufacturer's Business Motivation; How Do You Measure Success? and Adaptation and Deployment.

William P. Mazzetti, PE, Vice President, Engineering & Chief Engineer, Rosendin Electric

The Evolution of Modular Data Centers

This presentation will review the fastestgrowing new trend in data center technology: Modular Data Centers. Attendees will learn the direction the data center market is taking, explore how to reduce infrastructure costs and deployment time, discover how a modular data center may meet your financial needs and physical constraints, hear about realworld data center business challenges and solutions and experience the look and feel of a modular data center first-hand.

Tim Cortes, Chief Technology Officer, Power Distribution, Inc.
Dave Mulholland, VP-Marketing, Service, Power Distribution, Inc.