Data Centers: The Need for Green
Posted March 27th, 2013
In 2010, data centers consumed a whopping 2.2% of the total electrical power used in the U.S. And that was before nearly every man, woman and child in the country starting toting around their own laptop, smartphone and/or e-reader. It’s a single number that makes a powerful point – future data centers need to go green. Fortunately, technical advances are already leading in that direction – the whole goal of cloud computing, for example, is to cram as much computing power as possible into one data center. Here’s who’s getting it right – or not – and why.
The Right Way
Consolidation in the cloud. According to Rob Bernard of Microsoft, “For an enterprise company, moving things like Exchange or Outlook over to our services ended up in a net reduction in energy of about 30% of energy, and a 30% reduction in carbon. For a small business, the number was even higher: 90% energy savings.” The reason? Bernard says, “It’s mass efficiency -it’s like mass transit versus taking an individual vehicle.”
Climate control. Facebook opened a data center in Lulea, Sweden. Why Sweden? Because the chilly northern climate allowed them to use outside air to cool the data central naturally. Since cooling a data center can account for half of its energy use, this was a smart move.
Carbon cutting. Lulea, Sweden, also offered Facebook close proximity to carbon-saving hydroelectric power. Google and Microsoft have jumped on this bandwagon as well, building data centers in Washington State, which has cheap, abundant hydropower.
The Way of the Future
While the strategies above are eco-friendly, Microsoft’s Bernard has even loftier goals. According to him, “the future of the data center is to have no data centers.” He backed up this assertion with the presentation of a server array covered only by a canopy – no lighting, no HVAC, no concrete – that ran for nearly an entire year without requiring any maintenance. While not sweeping the world yet, the canopy data center may well be the future. After all, as Matthew Wheeland of GreenBiz.com points out, “When the economic benefits run parallel to environmental benefits, it’s a sure-fire success.”
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