Information Technology Understand the Need to Join the Green Movement
With an estimated 60-70% of electrical consumption in large data centers being used to ONLY keeping the systems cool, in order to maintain performance, it’s no wonder that such a huge commitment to power usage has caused I.T. budget monitors to consider joining the “Green” movement.
The extremely air-conditioned computer farms known as data centers are the gas-guzzling jalopies of the technology world. Some require 40 or 50 times more power than comparably sized office space.
So with energy costs high and environmental friendliness making for good public relations, more tech companies are touting ways they are “greening” data centers, which serve up Web pages, swap Internet traffic, and process and store business information.
But it’s a lot easier to put out a news release than to build a data center with a significantly smaller environmental footprint. Even as efficiency improvements are reducing the energy gulped by many kinds of hardware, the industry’s overall electricity consumption could double from 2006 to 2011 as demand grows.
“It’s somewhat analogous to someone who decides to purchase an energy-efficient automobile and says, ‘Gee, I’m using 30% less gasoline with this, that means I can drive 30% more miles than I used to, and still do something for the environment,”‘ said Charles King, an analyst with Pund-IT Research. “It’s an interesting philosophical question.”
A new report from the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the easiest, least inexpensive changes to data center operations — involving tweaks to software, layout and air conditioning — could boost efficiency by 20%.
