The Open Compute Project is a collective effort by Facebook and a number of players in the datacenter industry to bring lessons learned from the social media giant's giant IT deployment to the rest of the world.
Datacenters account for 3% of global electricity consumption – about the same as all of Switzerland or the Czech Republic -- according to people I met at the recent Open Compute Summit in San Jose.
With increasing mobility at the edge of the cloud and vast new dataflows being pre...| By Natalie Lerner | Article Rating: |
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| December 7, 2014 11:15 AM EST | Reads: |
1,851 |
How Green Data Centers Achieve Efficiency
Data centers have matured immensely over the past decade with today's data centers being greener than ever. Pike Research mentions that the green data center market was worth $17.1 billion in 2012. The green data center economy is expected to grow rapidly throughout this decade. Pike Research estimates that the total market value for green data centers will increase to $45 billion by 2016.
Green data centers are crucial for the advancement of computing technology. Data centers are being built all over the world to house large public computing infrastructures such as Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud or Amazon AWS. Each of these organizations has their own methodologies in place on how to create a greener data center, but some have faced criticism that they aren't doing quite enough. Regardless of who constructs the data center, the keys to building data center revolve around the following two key ideas:
Using Free Cooling to Achieve Energy Efficiency
Google mentions that they employ a free cooling technique in their data centers. This isn't specific to Google; the idea of using free cooling techniques is an industry standard. The process of free cooling refers to methods that remove heat from the data center without the use of an air conditioner or a chiller. Companies that build out green data centers must first take advantage of the free methods available to cool their equipment. Availability of wind, water and thermal reservoirs add specific advantages to those looking to build out green data centers. Experts agree that the ability to cool your data center is where the most opportunity for saving energy exists.
Managing Variables inside the Facility
Today's data centers are built using the most efficient methodologies in mind. One of the biggest misconceptions about data centers is that they must be kept chilly. Believe it or not, green data centers set their thermostat high in order to save energy. The average temperature inside of a Google data center is 80 degrees. Google humorously notes that they ask their data center employees to wear shorts to work because of how warm it is inside of their data centers.
Today's data centers can safely operate in the 80 degree range without risking equipment failures. The warm nature of green data centers presents the potential for hot spots to begin popping up inside the data center. Thermal modeling is used to detect hot spots and airflow is directed towards these hot spots in order to mitigate the risks of overheating. Airflow architecture is essential in keeping specific systems cooled at their appropriate temperatures.
Published December 7, 2014 Reads 1,851
Copyright © 2014 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
Syndicated stories and blog feeds, all rights reserved by the author.
- Data Center Energy Management Leader, TrendPoint Systems, Launches Four Point Plan for 'Green Data Centers' Aimed at Reducing Energy, Carbon Emissions
- Broadcom Accelerates Next Generation 'Green' Data Centers with 'Coolest' 10GbE Switch
- Crossbeam Shows How Companies Can Reduce Energy Consumption by Half to Promote Green Data Center Security
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Natalie Lerner is a senior contributor for CloudWedge. In her spare time, Natalie enjoys exploring all things cloud and is a music enthusiast. Follow Natalie’s daily posts on Twitter: @Cloudwedge, or on Facebook.
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SYS-CON Events announced today that Cisco, the worldwide leader in IT that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate, has been named “Gold Sponsor” of SYS-CON's 16th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 9-11, 2015, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY.
Cisco makes amazing things happen by connecting the unconnected. Cisco has shaped the future of the Internet by becoming the worldwide leader in transforming how people connect, communicate and collaborat...
WSM International is launching a DevOps services division that offers assessment, consulting and implementation to large enterprises and organizations with complex infrastructures. This is the first independent services company to create a dedicated practice to help organizations looking to transition to the DevOps model.
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The performance engineering group within the large US insurance company was the one that started adopting application per...
Cloud computing is transforming the way businesses think about and leverage technology. As a result, the general understanding of cloud computing has come a long way in a short time. However, there are still many misconceptions about what cloud computing is and what it can do for businesses that adopt this game-changing computing model. In this exclusive Q&A; with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan, Rex Wang, Vice President of Product Marketing at Oracle, discusses and dispels some of the common myths about cloud computing that still exist today.
Axeda, based in Foxboro, Mass., has created a machine-to-machine capability for analysis -- in other words, an Axeda Machine Cloud for the Internet of Things.
We have the whole Internet of Things (IoT) phenomenon. People are accepting more and more devices, end points, sensors, even things within the human body, delivering data out to applications and data pools. What do you do in terms of helping organizations start to come to grip with this M2M and IoT data demand?

























