At Connectivity Week in Santa Clara, recently, I took part in a series of panel discussions on data center energy efficiency. The discussions covered a wide range of issues from the practicalities of infrastructure optimization to the possible role of data centers in demand response schemes. There was a particular (more…)

Quick. What uses more electricity? The American automobile industry or the Internet? Has to be cars and trucks, right?

Not even close. The Internet is a massive user of electricity. One reason for the tremendous need for electricity can be traced to the continuous need for (more…)

I recently spent time with Intel hearing about its product and development roadmap for the next few years. Given that what Intel is thinking now decides the computer platforms on which we will be running much of our business in five years’ time, its view of the future carries more weight than most. It was (more…)

Greenpeace has released a report titled How Dirty is your Data? which looks at the energy choices powering cloud computing. Based on 2007 data the report claims that if the cloud is compared to nations across the globe it would be the fifth largest consumer of electricity. The cloud would rank ahead (more…)

The broad acceptance of Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) as a measure for data center energy efficiency is to be welcomed. After all, if we don’t measure it, we won’t improve it. However, the limits of PUE are widely recognized. Amongst the most glaring anomalies is the fact that improving the efficiency of your IT equipment, without (more…)

Two announcements made this month reinforce the growing importance of energy efficiency to the battle for the data center market.

First, graphics chip developer NVidia announced that it is going to take on Intel and AMD in the CPU market with a new range of products based on chip designs (more…)

Coal-fired electricity is still the cheapest form of electricity around, that is, if you don’t count the environmental and social costs of emitting large amounts of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and mercury into our air and water.

The right mix of cheap electricity, cheap labor, and proximity to raw materials and (more…)

It has been previously stated here in an article by Crisp Green that generating energy from poop is unlikely. I disagree.

It seems that the idea is not too far-fetched. The New York Times published an article going in that direction. Indeed why buy foreign natural gas when we have ample reserves just next door? (more…)

The carbon footprint of the internet: Around 300 million tonnes of CO2 per year, equivalent to every person in the UK flying to America and back twice over.

All carbon footprints are hard or impossible to pin down accurately, but the internet is a particularly complex case. This isn’t just due to the fact that the “net” consists of (more…)

The AFCOM association recently revealed the results of a survey of 436 data center sites that showed the following trends: Cyber terrorism is an increasing concern, mainframe deployment is declining, storage deployment is increasing, and “green” technologies are definitely happening.

AFCOM found that there is a shift in data centers away from mainframe computers and toward other types of servers. That makes total sense as virtualization is the mantra of the day for those companies that are interested in optimizing their power by having several operating systems function within just one server. Data processing and storage is done within one server as opposed to a traditional system where the network is distributed in an elaborate design comprising of several servers and workstations all attached to their own separate hardware components. Similar to a virtual environment, all the physical resources such as additional servers, PCs, storage, hard drives, processors, and mother boards are totally eliminated. That way, not only are we saving big time in hardware investment (good for the planet!), we are also avoiding excess maintenance costs. That’s a big thumbs up!

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