Go green: climate change changing data centers (and !bug)

It's an inconvenient Thursday's IT Blogwatch: in which we examine power-saving data centers. Not to mention the classic QA joke, reinterpreted as visual pun...

Chris Mellor reports:

The Green Grid has laid out its road map for the rest of the year and announced it will provide nine more studies in the next four months. [It] is a nonprofit organization looking at data center power and efficiency. Its goal is to help reduce the overall consumption of power in data centers worldwide.
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Membership has grown fast, with more than 80 current members, up from 11 founding companies ... It intends to use the Green Grid's efficiency standards to expand its financial incentive programs for customers who buy energy-efficient servers, data storage devices, routers and other computing equipment.
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It divides its work into data collection, data assessment and technology proposals. In the data collection area, the Green Grid will deliver an update on data center Power-efficiency metrics and a standards and metrics inventory ... Under the data-assessment banner, the Green Grid plans to produce four publications ... The technology proposals will be kicked off by a report about power-distribution options, such as moving to direct current power supply, followed by a cooling options study and an initial technology road map for the next five years. [more]

Nate Anderson adds:

In the wake of a recent EPA report claiming that energy use is poised to double in data centers by 2011, industry consortium The Green Grid held a webcast today to outline its plans to ramp up energy efficiency in server rooms and data centers around the country. It's an issue, said reps from Dell and Intel, that has now reached up to the CIO level and demands immediate attention.

Well, not every CIO. Concerns about energy efficiency are still partly regional, as some data center operators on the east and west coasts already run up against power constraints ... The organization has ... developed an action plan for the next two years. That plan? Do more studies.

Green Grid reps stressed today that understanding and then defining energy efficiency has to come before any plans to increase it. Having metrics to measure energy efficiency at the level of an entire data center has been a longstanding problem in the business, and one that makes it difficult to do comparisons between facilities.
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Here's hoping that virtualization, innovative cooling systems, and new ideas like high-voltage DC power truly pay off and that data centers everywhere go green. [more]

Matt Stansberry LEEDs by example: [You're fired -Ed.]

The Green Grid is lobbying the U.S. Green Building Council to create a LEED certification for the data center. The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building rating system is a benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of green buildings. Developed by the USGBC, LEED recognizes building performance in five areas: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection, and indoor environmental quality.

Some data centers are already billing themselves as environmental stewards by certifying under the USGBC’s LEED rating system. The LEED rating system was designed for commercial office buildings, not data centers. The requirements of IT departments have been so far opposite the sustainable design movement that the USGBC has so far opted not to address data center facilities at all. In fact, it is nearly impossible for a data center to qualify as a LEED facility unless it is included in a mixed-use construction project.
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Unfortunately, developing LEED-DC is going to be a huge challenge. The USGBC is not a government entity — it’s a consortium of light bulb, carpeting, and furniture vendors and architects. The group has experienced massive growth and popularity and it is challenged to keep up with its own ambitious agenda. Hence, it has been reluctant to open this data center can of worms. [more]

But Ted Samson eschews the politics:

As critically observed by Gartner in a recent report, the Green Grid has demonstrated no plans to overtly tackle broader environmental issues beyond the datacenter -- reducing e-waste, for example -- through means such as political lobbying ... Nowhere on the Green Grid's Web site do I see mention that one of its goals is to address "broader environmental issues," and it's certainly never come up in my various interactions with members of the group. Still, its members do acknowledge that there is, indeed, a plethora of IT-related environmental issues to address. However, the group is determined to remain focused on its primary objective: energy efficiency in the datacenter.
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The Green Grid's goals are very ambitious, and the fruits of its labor are extremely important for IT organizations and tech-reliant companies throughout the United States and beyond as they struggle with keeping energy costs down and datacenters humming .
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I certainly am not arguing that the consortium shouldn't have any interaction with the government ... But if the Green Grid is to effectively pursue its ambition of being an independent body for developing vendor-neutral recommendations on best practices, metrics, and technologies for all datacenter operators, the last thing it needs is to let itself be distracted -- or potential members and supporters to be put off -- by its dabbling in politics. [more]

Go, John E. West (life is peaceful there):

At a press event before the release yesterday the group reiterated its bottom up focus (partly in response to questions about criticisms from the Gartner Group): start with the data center now, where they feel they can make a near-term impact and get their hands around the problem, and work out to larger issues over the long term when there is a contribution to be made.

The group seems very focused on practical steps, which is refreshing and to my mind indicates that they might actually accomplish what they’re setting out to get done.
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The near term plan is aggressive, with major deliverable documents in all thrusts by the end of this year. Certainly some of these documents will be high level, but the group intends to iterate and refine over time. The list of planned documents is comprehensive and, speaking as someone who runs a large datacenter, actually looks useful. Since their press release isn’t up yet, I’ve stuck the schedule in below. [more]

Martin MacLeod sounds happy:

Excellent news, granted I might not adapt these best practicies/standards or even rules in my organization overnight, and that what works for one company might nto work for another, but keep in mind, the more we all talk about what’s going on, the more we can move forward, continually evolve what we do internally and as an industry.

They do sound very detailed and the announcement re-enforces the message, highlights that the data center is now the substantial part of your operational costs, that I can buy that extra server or rack of blades, but hosting it, powering it and cooling it is the problem. How you therefore react to this is what matters. [more]

[Martin MC Brown also has a couple of interesting posts about green desktops -- see the "Around Computerworld" list below]

Buffer overflow:

Around the Net

• Paul McNamara: World Wide Web turns Sweet 16
• Mike Masnick: Seven Years Later: Vote Swapping Web Sites Were Legal
• Jon Stokes: Dell considers bundling virtualization on motherboards
• Richard MacManus: Eric Schmidt Defines Web 3.0
• Enterprise Topics: SOA & BPM - The Journey Continues
• Data Center Knowledge: Chicago: Greenest Data Center Location?
• LewisC: 10 Simple Oracle Streams Tips

Around Computerworld

• Michael R. Farnum: Lamenting about the shortage of personable and professional geeks
• Ian Lamont: What Second Life business exodus?
• Martin MC Brown: Low-cost computing with the EFIKA
• Martin MC Brown: VIA continue to quietly stride ahead
• Preston Gralla: Motley Fool: Kiss Vonage good-bye
• Martin McKeay: Hacking locks instead of computers
• Shark Tank: Come to think of it, that sure IS a problem
• Shark Bait: IT Last To Know On New Hires
• Douglas Schweitzer: Worried about WiFi? Read on...

Previously in IT Blogwatch

• New iMacs, iWork, iLife, iEtc. (and pukelight)
• Linux StinkPads ahoy! (and compendium vol 10)
• Dateline Las Vegas: hackers whack a mole hack (and outed-FSJ)
• Who wants a free Google phone? (and comic() {comic();})
• Something wireless in the AAir (and LOLpresidents)
• Older posts

And finally... You either get it or you don't

Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/adviser/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and spam. A 20 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. You too can pretend to be Richi's friend on Facebook, or just use boring old email: blogwatch@richi.co.uk.