Uncle Sam wants green data centers - by Doug Mohney

Views and Opinions on Green IT (Oct 28 2009) Emissions , Servers

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   Federal data centers are being targeted for energy reductions as a part of a broader push for U.S. government agencies to reduce greenhouse gases, reports Federaltimes.com.  But will it make a difference? 

   An executive order signed by President Barak Obama on October 5 requires agencies to begin measuring greenhouse gas emissions and set targets for reducing them. Data centers look to be an easy target for savings since the government owns around 10 percent of the country's centers and servers based upon an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated generated on 2006 data.

    The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is now in the process of collecting updated statistics from all agencies, including details on energy consumption, property location and capacity of centers; the last inventory by OMB was back in 1999 – a couple of lifetimes of server hardware and data growth.

    However, the data being collected is already bound to be a bit dated by the time all the numbers are added up.  Some federal agencies have already started to squeeze out savings by moving to virtualized servers and other techniques.  The U.S. Postal Service has already downsized 791 of 895 physical servers through virtualization, reducing data center power consumption by 3.5 million KW hours per year.

    To help matters along, the EPA's Energy Star program is in the process of developing a rating tool for data centers – both stand-alone facilities and those located in office buildings.  The tool will be used to certify the efficiency of data centers similar to Energy Star programs for buildings, homes, and appliances.

    What the article didn't address is the potential – or lack thereof – for interagency cooperation in order to reduce costs.  Given interagency rivalries and mission priorities, how likely will we see consolidation of servers and data centers, across the federal government with multiple agencies agreeing to pool resources?  Technology-flavored agencies such as the Department of Energy, the EPA, and NASA don't have a problem working together, but it is unlikely we'll see the Department of Health and Human Services sharing a data center with the Department of Defense or Treasury.

    In some cases, agencies may move to outsource some times of operations to green data center "islands" and simply shut down facilities, reducing both real estate and power footprints.  However, outsourcing will likely not be the first option for many agencies dealing with either sensitive and/or confidential data.  The IRS, for instance, is likely to continue to operate its own data centers separate from other agencies with few objections from U.S. taxpayers.

   
   

   
   

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