Data centres lie at the heart of almost every service on the Internet. Data centres are used to provide search results, to power social media, to store and index email, to host “cloud” applications, for online retail and to provide a myriad of other web services. Consequently the more efficient they can be made the better for all of us. The power of modern data centres is in combining commodity off-the-shelf server hardware and network equipment to provide what Google’s Barrosso and Ho ̈lzle describe as “warehouse scale” computers. Data centres rely on TCP, a transport protocol that was originally designed for use in the Internet. Like other such protocols, TCP has been optimised to maximise throughput, usually by filling up queues at the bottleneck. However, for most applications within a data centre network latency is more critical than throughput. Consequently the choice of transport protocol becomes a bottleneck for performance. My thesis is that the solution to this is to move away from the use of one-size-fits-all transport protocols towards ones that have been designed to reduce latency across the data centre and which can dynamically respond to the needs of the applications. This dissertation focuses on optimising the transport layer in data centre networks. In particular I address the question of whether any single transport mechanism can be flexible enough to cater to the needs of all data centre traffic. I show that one leading protocol (DCTCP) has been heavily optimised for certain network conditions. I then explore approaches that seek to minimise latency for applications that care about it while still allowing throughput-intensive applications to receive a good level of service. My key contributions to this are Silo and Trevi. Trevi is a novel transport system for storage traffic that utilises fountain coding to max- imise throughput and minimise latency while being agnostic to drop, thus allowing storage traffic to be pushed out of the way when latency sensitive traffic is present in the network. Silo is an admission control system that is designed to give tenants of a multi-tenant data centre guaranteed low latency network performance. Both of these were developed in collaboration with others.

Rapid growth of digitalization has urged Data Centres (DC) to be more energy efficient by recovering waste heat from server racks that would otherwise be wasted. This techno-economic study is focused on upgrading low temperature waste heat from typical Air-Cooled DC for District Heating Network (DHN) market in Stockholm region. The methodology is carried out by four system configurations that are experimented with different historical electricity data, impacts of climate change with simulated weather data, and variations in DHN temperature as the heat supply scenario development. The results show that DC configuration with combination of both free-cooling and waste heat recovery can foster techno-economic benefits by reducing cooling consumption by 55.6%, compared to DC configuration with free-cooling only; and further lowering Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) from 1.95 to 1.52. Lifecycle Operational Expenditure (LCO) has also been used as the economic indicator to represent the maximum initial investment that data centre should accept when deciding to recover the waste heat to the DHN. Moreover, the new technical Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) were introduced to support the decision-making in the supply of recovered waste heat to DHN. The electricity price was further identified to have greater impact than the effect of climate change for the overall techno-economic performance. On one specific hand, heat supply with Price-Limit scenario concluded that 40.18% of available waste heat from DC is not profitable should it be injected to DHN in the case of low electricity price. In the case when the electricity price is high, the amount of waste heat not injected to DHN increases to 58.57%. / <p>The thesis defense presentation was held digitally on Zoom on June 19th 2023 at 09.00 CEST</p>

The data centre industry is becoming more and more important due to the rapid increase of digitalisation in our society. However, data centres are large electricity consumers since electricity is needed for both the Information Technology (IT) equipment and the cooling systems, as a certain temperature must be maintained in the server rooms in order to guarantee service operations. Thus, it is important to make data centres less energy intensive and implement a circular economy approach in the sector. One possible way to implement circularity is to reuse the waste heat generated in data centres in district heating networks. However, the potential of using waste heat from low-temperature sources, such as data centres, is mainly unexploited; therefore, more studies are needed in order to inform such use. In particular, it is essential to understand how this potential could be assessed.  The main purpose of this study is to identify the barriers to more heat recovery utilisation and the opportunities that heat recovery contracts can bring from the perspective of key stakeholders linked to DCs’ systems operation and service use, such as DC operators, DH operators, and municipalities. The study also aims at understanding how municipalities can enhance a greater integration of waste heat from data centres in district heating systems. To reach the objectives, this study is constructed as an explorative case study on the use of excess heat from data centres in the Stockholm district heating system. Eight stakeholders belonging to those categories were interviewed and the data collected were analysed with a Strengths – Weaknesses – Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis.   The study concludes that the main barriers preventing the implementation of heat recovery investments, in the explorative analysis for the Stockholm county, seem to be more business related than technical. For example, not having a clear business model in place. In terms of main opportunities, these are related to an improvement in sustainability, such as saving resources by replacing them with excess heat and exploiting an inevitable product instead of wasting it. Moreover, this study also concludes that municipalities can help find suitable places for data centres near the district heating grids both through initiatives like Stockholm Data Parks and city planning. / Datacenterbranschen blir allt viktigare på grund av den snabba ökningen av digitaliseringen i vårt samhälle. Datacenter är dock stora elkonsumenter eftersom el behövs både för IT-utrustningen och för kylsystemen, eftersom en viss temperatur måste hållas i serverrummen för att garantera serviceverksamheten. Det är därför viktigt att göra datacenter mindre energikrävande och införa en cirkulär ekonomi inom sektorn. Ett möjligt sätt att genomföra cirkulär ekonomi är att återanvända den spillvärme som genereras i datacentren i fjärrvärmenäten. Potentialen för att använda spillvärme från källor med låg temperatur, t.ex. datacenter, är dock i huvudsak outnyttjad, och därför behövs fler studier för att informera om sådan användning. I synnerhet är det viktigt att förstå hur denna potential kan bedömas.  Huvudsyftet med den här studien är att identifiera hindren för ett ökat utnyttjande av värmeåtervinning och de möjligheter som avtal om värmeåtervinning kan ge ur de viktigaste intressenternas perspektiv när det gäller drift av DC-system och användning av tjänster, t.ex. DC-operatörer, DH-operatörer och kommuner. Studien syftar också till att förstå hur kommunerna kan främja en ökad integrering av spillvärme från datacenter i fjärrvärmesystemen. För att nå målen är denna studie uppbyggd som en explorativ fallstudie om användningen av överskottsvärme från datacenter i Stockholms fjärrvärmesystem. Åtta intressenter som tillhörde dessa kategorier intervjuades och de insamlade uppgifterna analyserades med en SWOT-analys (Strengths - Weaknesses - Opportunities and Threats).  I studien dras slutsatsen att de främsta hindren för investeringar i värmeåtervinning, i den explorativa analysen för Stockholms län, verkar vara mer affärsrelaterade än tekniska. Till exempel att man inte har en tydlig affärsmodell på plats. När det gäller de viktigaste möjligheterna är dessa relaterade till en förbättring av hållbarheten, t.ex. att spara resurser genom att ersätta dem med överskottsvärme och utnyttja en oundviklig produkt i stället för att slösa bort den. I studien dras dessutom slutsatsen att kommunerna kan hjälpa till att hitta lämpliga platser för datacenter nära fjärrvärmenäten, både genom initiativ som Stockholm Data Parks och stadsplanering.

Loin d’être des produits immatériels, les technologies de l’information et de la communication (TIC) ont un réel impact environnemental tout au long de leur cycle de vie. L’Éco-TIC est le point de rencontre entre le développement durable et les TIC. Le droit de l'Éco-TIC est l’ensemble des règles de droit régissant les rapports entre les technologies de l’information et le domaine environnemental. Ce mémoire a pour objectif d’examiner les normes juridiques, notamment en Europe et en Amérique du Nord, qui permettent de limiter l’impact environnemental des technologies de l’information lors des trois phases du cycle de vie des TIC. Tout d’abord, nous nous penchons sur l’étape de la conception des TIC. À cette étape, les réglementations en matière d’écoconception, l’utilisation des terres rares et l’interdiction de l’obsolescence programmée sont particulièrement pertinentes. Ensuite, nous examinons comment les entreprises tentent de réduire la consommation énergétique des TIC lors de la phase d’utilisation, notamment par le biais de la responsabilité sociétale de l’entreprise (RSE). Nous verrons également que les centres de données se multiplient afin de répondre à une demande toujours plus forte. Enfin, nous traitons de la fin de vie des TIC, phase pour laquelle l’Union européenne a créé des directives en matière de réutilisation, réduction et recyclage qui influent sur le plan international. / Information and communication technologies (ICT) are far from being intangible goods and do have an environmental impact during their entire life cycle. Green IT stands at the crossroads of sustainable development and ICT. Green IT law consists of a set of rules governing the relations between information technologies and environment. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the European and North American legal standards regulating the environment impacts of ICT throughout the three phases of their life cycle. In the first part, the design phase of ICT is examined. At this stage, existing regulations on eco-design, the use of rare earth elements, and the interdiction of planned obsolescence are of particular relevance. The thesis then studies how companies are trying to reduce the use-phase energy consumption of ICT, notably through the Corporate Social Responsability. The issue of the multiplication of data centres, due to an ever-growing demand, is also discussed. In the end, the thesis considers the end-of-life phase of ICT and the directives created by the European Union that affect recycling and waste reduction management at an international level.