![]() ![]() It’s as if our air conditioner were running on hot days with the window open, letting cooled air escape rather than do its job in the room. Thermal containment solutions: Using our window-vs-AC example, when we first moved to Magic Pocket, we cooled entire data centers without taking into account how air could be wasted through leaks or issues with airflow.A comparable example would be to think of a hot San Jose apartment: on cool days it makes more sense to open a window to natural cooling than blast the AC-both energy usage and cost are lower. This reduces the amount of cooling needed to maintain appropriate temperatures. With outside air economization, our systems bring in outside air at lower temperatures. Outside air economization: in our data centers, hardware needs to be cooled 24/7 because inlet temperatures must be stable to prevent system failure caused by the overheating of components.These strategies include the implementation of outside air economization, thermal containment solutions, and maximizing power utilization through our spaces. We set out to achieve optimum efficiency through industry best practices throughout our deployments. In 2015, our PUE was consistent with industry averages, but we felt we could do better. When we set a goal to achieve best in class PUE, we looked to existing industry benchmarks. Power usage effectiveness (PUE) assesses how efficiently we’re able to leverage the power we consume within our data centers. We’re not here to brag about it-we hope to inspire others to join in bringing real change to the world we share. We’ve identified three strategies to get to where we are today, and to keep going to even greater sustainability. ![]() For us there’s a simple metric: You can store all your stuff on Dropbox knowing our data loads are covered by 100% renewable electricity. We decided to focus our sustainability efforts on customer data storage because-the Edelman 2021 Trust Barometer found that customers are 5.7% more likely to trust companies that embrace sustainable practices. The result was achieving a major milestone in our journey to carbon neutrality: all of our data center storage server power is covered by 100% renewable electricity. Our peers were setting ambitious sustainability goals. Other teams at Dropbox were asking the same questions. We pondered the implication of these high bills not just for Dropbox, but for the environment. After our first year of deployment, we had a bit of sticker shock from our utility bills. ![]() We were able to check the box of powering hundreds of millions of users, but we needed to ensure we were being responsible in how we operate.Īs we scaled up our team, we started looking past just KTLO (keeping the lights on) toward how to operate more efficiently. This presented us with challenges including power efficiency and concern for our carbon footprint. After our original migration to Magic Pocket in 2015, our primary goal was to manage large capacity growth at scale. Known as Magic Pocket, it’s our own custom built multi-exabyte infrastructure. As you may already know, Dropbox runs our infrastructure on a hybrid model-a mix between on-premise hardware and the public cloud.
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