Sustainability

Building for the Future with Sustainable Composable Infrastructure

The number of global data centers has increased from 500,000 in 2012 to more than 8 million in 2021¹. Current growth trajectories suggest that data centers will consume as much as 20% of global energy by 2025² and already represent 3.2% of global carbon emissions. That number is expected to increase to 14% by 2040.³ To cool these large operations, the Wall Street Journal reports that the typical datacenter uses 130 million gallons of water a year. That’s the same amount of water as a three-building hospital and more than two 18-hole golf courses.⁴

Whether you’re simply concerned or genuinely alarmed by the contribution of the modern data center to carbon emissions and water usage, it’s hard to argue with the need to prioritize environmental safeguards. Liqid’s composable solution significantly improves data center utilization rates compared to traditional static architectures⁵, reducing power and cooling requirements to deliver the industry’s most efficient and sustainable datacenter architecture. Imagine the difference we can make in slashing data center power consumption, reducing datacenter emissions and lowering water required for cooling.

Change the equation with Liqid composable infrastructure.

“For a long time, it was fine for IT to simply embrace the idea of sustainability as a concept. But now, IT must prioritize it as an actual top-tier priority,” according to ESG. To download ESG’s paper on the subject, “Why IT Must Prioritize Sustainability,” go here.

How Do We Do It?

Reduce power consumption and carbon footprint

You can potentially double or triple your utilization rate – thereby lowering your power consumption and carbon footprint -- with features unique to Liqid’s composable infrastructure:

Compose power-hungry resources such as GPUs, memory and networking only where they’re required, when they’re required rather than overprovisioning every server for peak workloads.

Add GPUs without adding servers to enable massive GPU performance. In a GPU scale out cost analysis, one customer used 88 percent fewer servers, reducing power consumption by 62 percent and decreasing power and cooling cost by 62 percent (see table below).

Scale GPU, accelerator and storage resources independently for better resource utilization.

Perform add/move/change operations remotely via software, saving gas and drive time.

Customer Requirement

585 Teraflops (100 NVIDIA A100 GPU @ 30% Utilization)
640 CPU Cores (5 Compute Servers @ 128c)

2U 4X GPU Servers
(100 GPUs)

4U 8X GPU Servers
(100 GPUs)

Liqid Composable GPU (100 GPUs)

Liqid Composable GPU (43 GPUs)

Servers

GPUs

Results

Total Product Cost

Estimated Power Consumption/Year

Power Cost/Year*

Cooling Cost/Year**

Total Power Cost/Year

88% Fewer Servers

100 @ 30% util(585 TFlop)

525,600 kW

455,520 kW

374,928 kW

201,480 kW

$2,853,625

$2,426,210

$2,489,358

$1,219,238

$136,656

$118,435

$97,481

$52,385

$105,120

$91,104

$74,986

$40,296

$241,776

$209,539

$172,467

$92,681

57% Lower Product Cost

62% Lower Power Cost

62% Lower Total Power Cost/Yr

40% Increased GPU Utilization

62% Less Power Consumption

62% Lower Cooling Cost

Total Power Cost/5 Years

$1,208,880

$1,047,696

$862,334

$463,404

62%Lower Total Power Cost/5yrs

43 @ 70% util(587 TFlop)

* Cost/kWh Assumption = $0.20
**Cooling Capacity Ratio = 1.30

Reduce water consumption with a more efficient datacenter

Water is a scarce resource in many regions of the world. By creating a more efficient datacenter with composable infrastructure, you’re able to reduce the water required to cool your operation. A Liqid composable solution operates more efficiently and at higher utilization rates, reducing the amount of equipment to cool, and in turn, reducing the amount of water required.

Reduce disposal rates by maximizing the lifespan of existing assets

Extend the lifespan of existing assets by enabling composability to add new accelerators and storage to otherwise maxed out servers. You’ll reduce your disposal rate and your total cost of ownership (TCO) by making the most of your existing investment. Extend the life of devices by doing adds, moves and changes hands-free.

Reduce your energy costs

Power and cooling costs now make up a significant percentage (roughly 30%⁶) of the monthly cost of operating a large-scale datacenter. By lowering your infrastructure investment with composability, you’re contributing to both economic and environmental stewardship. It’s a win-win. As energy costs continue to rise, the high utilization rates of composable infrastructure will payoff for years to come.

For more information, check out the Liqid Sustainability Solution Brief
‍and watch the video below.