The digital gold rush – the impact of cryptocurrencies on the datacenter industry

Yigal Schneider - May 28, 2018

Crypto-Currency is a hot topic in today’s financial markets. The value of cryptocurrencies has climbed to over $300B in a very short time.  The manufacturing of these digital currencies, called mining, is done by dedicated and powerful datacenters. The cost of mining is a function of the datacenter’s energy efficiency and the cost of electricity.

As an example, mining a bitcoin in the UK will cost $8,400 (source: marketwatch.com). It is evidently clear that as long as the value of Bitcoin is lower than $8,400, mining in the UK would not be economically feasible. That is why bitcoin miners move to states where the cost of electricity is low and the climate allows free cooling. The clever ones also invest in the energy efficiency of their datacenters.

A Bitcoin miner

A classic miner

Digital currencies are an extreme example that demonstrates the role datacenters play in the modern economy and the significance of optimal design and operation of the datacenters’ air-conditioning and power systems.

Small data centers are also big spenders on electricity. For example, a small Israeli data center with 100KW IT load will spend on electricity annually between 80,000NIS in a well-designed datacenter to 480,000NIS in a less optimal site. That is a huge difference.

Most organizations are not aware of the huge potential for savings and efficiency.

Indirect Freecooling is, actually, quite feasible in Israel, including in the coastal area, Jerusalem, Negev and the Galilee. Liebert’s free cooling chillers and Liebert’s Econophase systems enable Israeli datacenters to reach a PUE in the neighborhood of 1.2.

We, at Alexander Schneider, believe knowledge should be shared. That is why we conduct free training and Lunch & learn sessions on Datacenters Best Practices. The list of topics includes:

  1. Methods & Best Practices in datacenter air-conditioning
  2. Datacenter UPS and Lithium batteries
  3. Energy efficiency by design. Reaching a PUE of 1.2 in Israel.
  4. iRPDU – Intelligent Rack PDUs
  5. Modular Bus Bars and flexible power distribution
  6. High-speed data transport up to 400G
  7. Cable management in the rack and at the row and room levels
  8. Selection guides for server and storage cabinets
  9. The new datacenter design rules
  10. Data center retrofit. Re-gain your hidden capacity
  11. Edge datacenters
  12. What is DCIM and how to select the DCIM software that is right for you
  13. An overview of the Uptime Institute’s Tier System

For more information please contact us info@schneider.co.il or just give us a call +972-9-8924444