HP opened a 50,000-square-foot data center in Fort Collins, Colorado, in March 2011, designing it to run production workloads while serving as a full-scale testbed for more sustainable operations. Its two data halls, cooling systems, containment and sensor controls were intended to let HP study how changes in facility conditions affect data-center efficiency—not to establish that the site achieved a particular energy saving or net-zero operation.
Why HP made a working data center a testbed
HP consolidated workloads from 13 older data centers into the Fort Collins facility, according to Data Center Knowledge’s March 2011 report. That production role mattered: rather than test only in a small laboratory, HP planned to study sustainability measures in a facility supporting real workloads.
The site included two identical data halls within 50,000 square feet of data-center space. HP said researchers could vary temperature, humidity, air pressure and design between conditions to investigate how those factors affected operations. The City of Fort Collins’ 2011–2012 technology-cluster report also described the facility as a collaboration with HP Labs focused on cooling and capacity efficiency.
What the facility was designed to test
Cooling approaches
HP described both air-side and water-side economization. Economizers use suitable outside-air or water conditions to reduce reliance on conventional mechanical cooling. Having both approaches in the facility gave researchers systems to study in the context of the site’s operating conditions; the available accounts do not report a controlled comparison or measured savings for either method.
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Airflow and containment
The design included hot-aisle and cold-aisle containment, which separates the streams of heated exhaust air and cooled supply air around server rows. Such arrangements are intended to limit mixing and direct cooling more effectively. HP’s stated research question was broader than any single piece of equipment: how cooling configuration and environmental conditions work together in a live data center.
Sensor feedback and adaptive vents
Sensor counts were reported differently by the two sources. Data Center Knowledge reported more than 8,000 environmental sensors in March 2011; HP Labs’ annual report, published in 2012 and describing work in 2011, said the facility had nearly 10,000 networked environmental sensors. These are each source’s reported figures, not a single reconciled count.
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HP Labs described adaptive vent tiles installed at scale. Algorithms used temperature, pressure and airflow data to adjust the vents in real time, directing chilled air where it was needed. The annual report also described a research Sandbox: an environmentally separate space with outside-air cooling and humidity control. See HP Labs’ 2011 annual report section on sustainability research.
How to understand the sustainability claims
The facility’s value as a testbed lay in examining interacting choices: air-side versus water-side economization, airflow containment, fixed versus sensor-driven cooling controls, and the environmental and workload conditions being supported. Those are useful comparison dimensions, but the published accounts cited here do not provide head-to-head test results or a quantified reduction in energy use.
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In 2012, HP said Fort Collins would provide a production environment for expanding research on its Net-Zero Energy Data Center architecture and demand management. That announcement describes a research direction, not proof that the Fort Collins facility itself operated at net-zero energy. HP’s announcement is available at HP’s May 30, 2012 release.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What is known about the facility’s later status
The available accounts establish the March 2011 opening, describe research conducted there in 2011, and report a continuing research role announced in 2012. They do not establish whether the data center or the research program is still operating today.
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