Workshop: Sustainable and energy efficient data centers

The objective of this tutorial workshop is to provide a review of sustainable and energy efficient data centers, and explain the most important challenges and opportunities related to them. After the review phase, a practical case study on reducing power consumption of a subarctic supercomputer center by retrofitted direct-to-chip liquid cooling is presented, and an evolution path from pure air-cooling of server racks toward direct liquid cooling is outlined. This tutorial will benefit industry practitioners, educators, and students who want to enhance their knowledge on such emerging subjects as direct liquid cooling of CPUs, extensive waste heat recycling, complementary renewable energy, and cost-effective paths for renewing computer servers and associated storage and communications equipment in the context of profitably “greening” data centers. Hence, this tutorial is particularly important for educators teaching in the information technology and computer engineering study programs, as well as for newcomers in the rapidly growing data center industry.