Our Data Center SRCF Receives a Perfect Energy Star Score
The SRCF is our main data center that hosts among others, Sherlock, XStream, Farmshare and SCG4 compute clusters. SRCF recently received a perfect Energy Star score of 100/100, outperforming 100% of similar data centers nationwide. SRCF uses 39.4% less energy per square foot than the national average. Compared to the national medium, we prevent 1,359 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions each year. This is another advantage to having a modern state of the art data center to host our computational servers.
SRCF Background
The Stanford Research Computing Facility (SRCF) provides the campus research community with data center facilities designed specifically to host high-performance computing equipment. Supplementing the renovated area of the Forsythe data center, the SRCF is intended to meet Stanford’s research computing needs for the coming years. A Stanford building located on the SLAC campus, the SRCF was completed in the fall of 2013, with production HPC services being offered as of December 2013. The facility and services therein are managed by the Stanford Research Computing Center (SRCC).
Capabilities
Space and Power: The SRCF has 3 megawatts of power and can host 150 racks. While this implies an average rack density of 20kW, the infrastructure can support higher-density compute racks with power consumption requirements from 20 to 100 kW each. Of the estimated 150 racks, 25 compute racks will be for SLAC, 50 for the School of Medicine, and 75 for Stanford’s non-formula schools.
The SRCF has a resilient but not redundant power infrastructure. The transmission grade power, delivered to SLAC and the SRCF, is UPS and generator protected, providing significant assurance should there be a regional power outage.
Cooling: The building’s design is non-traditional and especially energy efficient. The facility is cooled with ambient air fan systems for 90% of the year. For the hotter days and for equipment needing chilled water, high-efficiency air cooled chillers are available.
Network Connectivity: The SRCF has multiple redundant 10 gigabit networks linking it to the campus backbone, the Internet, Internet2 and other national research networks. In the fall of 2014, 100 gigabit network connectivity will also be provided between the SRCF and external networks. That bandwidth, coupled with the use of OpenFlow communications protocol (developed at Stanford) will provide unprecedented flexibility and capability in meeting the network transport needs of the research communities using the facility.
