Views and Opinions on Green IT

Squeezing Silicon for more power - By Doug Mohney

Explore Views and Opinions on Green IT (Feb 2 2012)

As companies build better data centers and more optimized servers to fit in those data centers, there are a number of ongoing efforts to squeeze more efficiency out of the basic bits -- CPUs, memory, storage -- of computing.   For the long term, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is getting into the act to stimulate more bang, er compute power per watt while a number of companies inch closer to non-volatile RAM to replace disk drives and flash-based memory. DARPA -- the organization who invented the Internet (Sorry, Al Gore) -- is getting a lot press on its PERFECT project -- Power Efficiency Revolution For Embedded Computing Technologies.  Invoking Moore's Law and Dennard's Scaling, DARPA wants to improve power efficiency for embedded computer systems, providing more computing power per watt of electrical power.  DARPA's looking for researchers and projects to push embedded processing systems from a baseline of ...

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Comment Mentions:   Doug Mohney

e-waste rules are missing the point - by Peter Judge

Explore Views and Opinions on Green IT (Jan 29 2012)

The subject of e-waste has come to the fore again, as the European Union has updated its rules on handling waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE). It’s good to see the subject getting another airing. E-waste is important for two big reasons: because it contains valuable raw materials which can be recovered and used, and because it also contains danger: there are poisons there, and recovering the good stuff is dirty and dangerous job. The new WEEE Directive (flagged in this release) does its best to address this, and prevent material going into landfill sites or to other countries where reprocessing it actually kills people.. However, there are at least two problems with the Directive, and the policies it embodies. Firstly, it concentrates on recycling, which overlooks some better options. A lot of old IT kit is junked while it still works, and classifying it as e-waste cuts out ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Europe   Peter Judge

smart light bulbs, the next big thing? by Doug Mohney

Explore Views and Opinions on Green IT (Jan 25 2012)

Last year, plug-and-play LED bulbs were all the rage.  Pricey compared to CFLs but without the headaches of mercury, LEDs provide a plug and play solution to cut energy usage.   But that's not good enough for some manufacturers, who feel the need to throw in networking capabilities to sex-up an already expensive purchase.  For example, Fujikom is building a 100-watt replacement bulb with a built-in Z-Wave radio.  At $100 per bulb retail, Fujikom enables users to cycle the bulb through colors and adjust brightness via the Z-Wave home automation technology.  Z-wave is designed to be a low-power wireless network to integrate all of a home's electronics into a single network.  Putting Z-Wave into a light bulb enables the ability to remotely and automatically turn lights on and off.  If you forgot to turn off a light, you can "call" home via a smartphone app and switch off the ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Doug Mohney

homes get smart meters, data centers need smart managers - by Peter Judge

Explore Views and Opinions on Green IT (Jan 22 2012)

Is there anything data center managers can learn from the world of domestic energy consumption? Consumer demand and the infrastructure to meet it go hand-in hand, of course. As Doug Mohney found at CES, it is clear that consumer electronics is continuing to develop, and will demand more and faster data. So while data centers get more efficient, the fact that demand is ramping up so quickly may mean overall energy use goes up. Meanwhile, in the home, there’s a similar urgent need to find a balance.  Technical  improvements are actually reducing the amount of energy used, but the overall trend is going relentlessly up. Last Thursday, Pilgrim Beart, of energy management company AlertMe, gave this year’s Clerk Maxwell lecture in London, at the Institute of Engineering and Technology. Named after the great physicist James Clerk Maxwell (whose eponymous equations unified electricity and magnetism), these lectures tend to ...

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Comment Mentions:   Doug Mohney   Peter Judge

A speedy echo of the future from the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show - by doug mohney

Explore Views and Opinions on Green IT (Jan 19 2012)

Last week, I was in reporter hell, also known as the 2012 International CES in Las Vegas.  The multi-day event with around 140,000 or so of my annual best friends is not easy on the psyche or the feet.  But you can spot trends that will roll directly to green data centers in the years to come. Sheer speed is going to be a big one.   All the next-generation ultrabooks and tablets and 3D smart OLED TVs have to get downloadable and streaming content from somewhere.  Manufacturers are starting to loading up laptops and storage devices with wired 10 Gbps Thunderbolt connections -- better than Ethernet, because it is synchronous -- along with plans to plug in room-based 60 GHz WiGig wireless connections to download full 1080p HD movies and backup tablets in minutes rather than hours.  Even stodgy WiFi is getting a refresh with multiple antennas and better silicon to ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Doug Mohney

China's possible carbon tax - by Peter Judge

Explore Views and Opinions on Green IT (Jan 15 2012)

This week, the climate change buzz has been about China’s possible carbon tax. The fact that such a tax is even being considered may show that climate change negotiations are actually making progress, although it looks like the eventual tax, if it arrives will be a damage limitation exercise. . At one stage schemes to tax energy or cap emissions were dismissed as overly big-state bureaucratic approaches to a problem which could still be dismissed as only theoretical. It’s not worth applying this sort of scheme, because it won’t work, said various kinds of deniers, and maybe if we are lucky the climate change problem will go away. Now the climate change data is open to the public, and new data is accumulating which backs up the story. The planet is warming, and governments are realising that something must be done. Of course, we will still get the ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Peter Judge

will excess data center heat be an asset? by Doug Mohney

Explore Views and Opinions on Green IT (Jan 10 2012)

It's a fact of IT life: servers generate heat.  For large data centers, this is a 24 x 7 x 365 problem.  Getting rid of heat (which is actually what cooling is really about -- moving heat from point A to point B) can be one of the most energy-consuming parts of the data center.  Could it become an asset one day? Back in Ye Olden Times, the simplest way to get rid of excess heat was to blast cold air at the problem.  As computers got hotter and components more densely packed, liquid cooling came into vogue, first using water and then moving to other heat transfer liquids.  The most extreme solution used customized liquids to immerse everything in a bath to move heat away.   But liquids are a pain. Water piping can leak onto electrical components -- not exactly a great idea -- while non-water solutions are expensive due to ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Iceland   Verne Global   Doug Mohney

when the sun comes back, how much will it do for us - by Peter Judge

Explore Views and Opinions on Green IT (Jan 8 2012)

It’s strange to be thinking about solar power now. I’m in the UK where, like the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, we aren’t getting so much sun as we do the rest of the year. It’s also a dark time for solar power here, as the British government recently removed the very generous subsidy which had boosted the price home owners are paid for electricity they generate at home and feed into the grid. This “feed in tariff” had given early adopters of rooftop solar panels a very nice ten percent annual return on investments of around £10,000. The government has changed that now, and the solar gold rush is ending in argument. The solar sector says it is wrong to whip the subsidy away, and pull the rug out from under a nascent industry which will be important both to the recovery and the ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Apple   Nokia   Facebook

Localfacture and the data center connection - by Doug Mohney

Explore Views and Opinions on Green IT (Jan 6 2012)

Will local customized production -- localfacture -- push data centers out of the suburbs to greener locations one day? Yes, it's a crazy idea, but it could happen in a decade with benefits for both sides. The concept is built around the cost and usage of power.  Many data centers remain in urban areas, where power is more expensive and "the grid" is now at near-maximum capacity.  Expansion in a maxed area becomes an extended negotiation with the local utility company. And that's before you start going into the incremental costs of more expensive insurance, union labor to build everything, and the higher leasing cost per square foot in any major city. Companies that need to build mega data centers these days put the cost of power near the top of the list, right after "Fiber, fiber, and more fiber."  This is why you have companies building centers in Washington ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Iceland   Doug Mohney

Once again, Efficiency is not the same as renewable supply - by Peter Judge

Explore Views and Opinions on Green IT (Jan 2 2012) Construction , Emissions , Solar , Servers

Happy New Year to you all. If we had to have a new year’s resolution in the world of green energy and green data centers, I guess it would be to maintain some clarity over the difference between efficient energy use, and renewable energy supply. We all know that we must do something about climate change (at least, all of us except the most ignorant climate-change deniers). What that should be depends on whether you think that we can cut our energy use by changing our habits and being more efficient, or keep our lifestyles just the same and change the way we generate our electricity. Ideas like smart grids and low-energy data centers play towards the path of greater efficiency, while moves to use wind and solar power are heading towards changing our energy sources. Both are green - but if your argument jumps relies on both, or flips ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Greenpeace   Facebook   Forbes

Wyoming Wind boosts green data center - by Doug Mohney

Explore Views and Opinions on Green IT (Dec 21 2011)

Wyoming is better known for cowboys, buffalo, and Dick Cheney, but the state also boasts one of the highest potential sources of wind energy in America.    One data center is leveraging the green angle and has already secured a number of customers. Green House Data, Wyoming's first multi-tenant data center just got fiber built into its facility, provided by Zayo Group.  Zayo will also provide IP transit services to Green House Data, as well as enabling on-net connectivity to 70 tenants from 24 states and three countries. Before we start singing hymnals to wind power in a few moments, let's stop and look at those statistics:  70 customers from 24 states in the U.S., plus three countries.  So you're looking at least 27 tenants who aren't from Wyoming -- almost 39 percent of the customers, and likely more since we don't know how many of ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Doug Mohney   Zayo Group

Season of goodwill for Greenpeace and Facebook - by Peter Judge

Explore Views and Opinions on Green IT (Dec 18 2011)

There’s enough bad news around, so let’s warm our hands on the cosy glow of Greenpeace and Facebook, finally making up with a kiss under the mistletoe.  After a year of Greenpace campaigning for Facebook to “unfriend coal”, and Facebook shrugging the demand off, the two bodies have relented and issued a joint statement in favour of clean energy. Greenpeace has been complaining that Facebook is using “dirty” coal-fired electricity for its Prineville data center in Oregon, while Facebook has argued that it is is using that electricity as efficiently as possible, while helping others to do the same through the information it shares in its Open Compute project. The argument had to end sometime, because Greenpeace needs Facebook. The environmental pressure group lives or dies on the supply of young, enthusiastic recruits, and Facebook is the only place it can find them. Of course, online activism is ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Greenpeace   Facebook   Peter Judge

UN Climate deal leaves all to pay for - by Peter Judge

Explore Views and Opinions on Green IT (Dec 11 2011)

Two years on from the UN climate summit which failed to agree on a timetable to cut emissions, another meeting finished this weekend with a late night compromise that looks a little more positive.  The COP17 meeting in Durban, South Africa, just about managed to keep the Kyoto protocol alive, but commentators say the compromise will still result in temperatures going up by 4C over pre-industrial levels, when the consensus is that the world needs to keep within 2C. On the positive side, the meeting managed to head off a complete disintegration over the issue of whether developing countries are expected to cut their own emissions too much - which they say would condemn them to a pre-industrial standard of living. This is progress since, the disastrous COP15 summit in Copenhagen in 2009. Vastly over-hyped, it saw President Obama publicly failing to win over the Chinese and was surrounded by overheated ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Barack Obama   Peter Judge

plus and minuses with green cloud-ness by Doug Mohney

Explore Views and Opinions on Green IT (Dec 7 2011)

Using the cloud for various applications has been hyped as a greener solution than on-site hosting, be it for email, data storage, or voice.  However, as the cloud giveth green savings, it also taketh away some power savings, as I'm personally discovering.  Hosted services are going to be a big winner over the next five years, as businesses large and small wise up to the fact that you can outsource a lot of your primary communications and productivity applications to "The Cloud."  People don't go into the cloud seeking power savings -- it's the dollar green that drives a shift.  Why keep (typically underutilized) servers on site, along with the overhead for cooling, hardware maintenance, insurance, and IT monitoring/support when you can take the corporate internet connection and subscribe to a service based on a per-person basis, going up and down as you add (or subtract) employees ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Doug Mohney

Power dominates London DCD Show - by Peter Judge

Explore Views and Opinions on Green IT (Dec 4 2011)

There were announcements about data center infrastructure management (DCIM) and presentations from major data center projects, but at London’s Data Center Dynamics (DCD) event, the buzz was in power supplies. I’m talking a metaphorical buzz of course, not a real one. These power supplies are ironing out inefficiencies, and noise is a big waste of energy. DCD has expanded vastly since it squeezed into a hotel last year. This time round, it occupied one end of London’s Excel center, one of whose echoing exhibition halls provided space for a “technology park”. In other words, there were half a dozen containers of various types to walk round. The biggest and most impressive of those were Schneider Electric’s new modules for power and cooling. They are large and shiny of course - and look distinctive if only from Schneider’s decision to opt for its own custom-made units, instead ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Peter Judge

Green 2025: The tipping Point by Doug Mohney

Explore Views and Opinions on Green IT (Nov 30 2011)

In the past, I have condemned various huffy-puffy 5 and 10 year analyst predictions for specific markets.  However, I am going to be a contrarian/hypocrite this week and say that by 2025, the world will have reached a green data center (and general economic) tipping point.  Now all I have to do is to explain how it will all happen over the next 15 years. To be honest, the next four years are going to be a bit rough. Green advances in the form of carbon reductions in North America and Europe are most likely to be offset by continued economic growth in Asia and Africa.  We're talking more data centers, more factories, and more energy demand rising significantly upward in developing markets while developed markets continue steady growth as they apply information technology to health care and (ironically) saving energy. Compounding carbon matters/measures over the next ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Europe   Doug Mohney

a surge of interest in batteries - by Peter Judge

Explore Views and Opinions on Green IT (Nov 27 2011)

Over at eWEEK Europe, the most-read articles this week have been on batteries - and I think they are becoming central to the movement for greater energy efficiency. Story of the week has been a piece on “everlasting” rechargeable batteries. That headline may not be strictly accurate, but it puts its finger on the problem we have all found with batteries, from our phones and gadgets on upwards. Batteries sound like a great idea, for storing energy, but they don’t last.  Disposable batteries are a very bad idea environmentally, so on the level of our gadgets we try to move to rechargeable ones, hoping to save money and use less resources. But then we come up with the problem that rechargeable batteries have a limited life cycle. They can only be charged a limited number of times (maybe 400) before their performance starts to degrade. With laptops, this kicks in ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Europe   Peter Judge

Thanksgiving Days are meant for testing - By Tate Cantrell

Explore Views and Opinions on Green IT (Nov 25 2011)

Forget about testing new wine pairings and new options for mince meat pie, this Thanksgiving is testing day for Verne Global's new data centre in Keflavik, Iceland. We are winding down two weeks of intense testing of our Colt modular data centre product and as I hope you would expect, we are notably impressed. Today's testing started at 6.30am with a full load testing of the mechanical and electrical systems, using carefully distributed small-scaled heaters to create a very real simulation of Iceland's carbon neutral data centre product filled to the brim with blade chassis and hadoop clusters. We tested both sides of our fully redundant electrical system, checking each setpoint of each system along the way with our fully integrated building monitoring system. This is Integrated Systems Testing at its finest. Our full Icelandic operations team swarming the aisles like kids in a candy shop ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Iceland   Verne Global   Tate Cantrell

Flooded Thailand, Greener Data Centers - By Doug Mohney

Explore Views and Opinions on Green IT (Nov 24 2011)

While disasters aren't usually something to cheer about, the flooding in Thailand is likely to lead to some incremental improvements in data center efficiency.   And it all spins around the price of hard disk drives. If you haven't been shopping for storage recently, the typical price of hard drives have jumped between 1.5 to 2.5 times over the past two to three weeks, according to one CNET blog post.  Massive flooding in Thailand has affected a wide range of electronics goods, trigging what is anticipated to be at least a six month "supply chain disruption" in hard drives.     Both Western Digital and Toshiba factories have been affected. Turns out more than 25 percent of the world's hard disk drive assemblies are located in Thailand's flooded areas, according to a piece by XBit Labs, triggering what is expected to be a contraction of units shipped ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Forrester Research   Doug Mohney   Business Week

Are Vendors blocking data centre efficiency? - By Peter Judge

Explore Views and Opinions on Green IT (Nov 20 2011)

Vendors want to be seen to be green. But are they really doing everything they can to help? As every new chip arrives, and every new server is produced, we are told how much less energy it uses, compared with the previous one. The people making servers, are keen for us to believe they are driven by a desire for us to use less electricity. However, it begins to look as if they really aren’t doing all they could to help. Simply by withholding information, they are making sure that data centers go on wasting energy. A data center traditionally uses “a room full of air conditioners to cool a room full of fan heaters”,  as a recent 451 Group report puts it. That’s a good description of what goes on, with servers blasting out heat, and air conditioners removing it. A certain amount of this is inevitable ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   ASHRAE   Peter Judge   Dell

The U.S. military green energy circle of life - By Doug Mohney

Explore Views and Opinions on Green IT (Nov 17 2011)

It's ironic that the U.S. Department of Defense (well, DARPA, to be precise) funded the initial research to build "The Internet."   After a number of years in academia, the Internet went commercial like mad in the 90s, leading the Department of Defense to pick it back up and incorporate all the underlying philosophies and technology into its core missions.  Now, the U.S. military is pushing green in a big way -- and it will likely result in spin-off benefits for green data operations. The Defense Department has an estimated energy "bill" of about $15 billion a year, according to a recent piece in NPR. When you have a lot of vehicles dependent upon fossil fuels, every time the cost of oil goes up a dollar a barrel, it impacts the cost of operations across the board -- not to mention all the headaches of transporting and delivering those fuels ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   NPR   U.S. Department of Defense   Doug Mohney

Cool, Green, Data In Iceland - By Sean McAvan, Vice President EMEA Sales, Datapipe

Explore Views and Opinions on Green IT (Nov 16 2011)

At Datapipe, we feel we have a responsibility to support long-term, global sustainability through the technologies we implement and the electricity we use. We have integrated sustainability into our solutions and our operations on multiple levels. For example, the electricity that powers our United States data centers comes from 100% renewable sources, primarily wind power. Our cloud solutions efficiently leverage hardware resources to consolidate server platforms and minimize power draw. We provide incentives for our employees to use public transport, we offer the option of paperless billing to our clients; and in the UK we support the multi-award winning, environmental NGO Enworks. Data centers consume huge amounts of power; the resulting cost in carbon emissions impact us all. Iceland, with its low ambient temperatures and renewable energy sources, is ideally placed to help minimize these emissions and help Datapipe meet its long-term sustainability responsibilities. And so it was with much ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Iceland   Verne Global   Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

two wins for greenpeace by peter judge

Explore Views and Opinions on Green IT (Nov 13 2011)

It’s been an interesting week for Greenpeace. Tthe environmental campaign group published its green electronics ranking - and also won a legal victory against a nuclear power giant. Hewlett-Packard came top of the Guide to Greener Electronics, which ranked makers of PCs, TVs, phones, games consoles and the like according to the impact their products have on the environment, including the use of hazardous chemicals, their policy towards recycling them at the end of their life, and the impact of the supply chain. For the last three years, Nokia has taken the top spot, but HP and Dell both jumped past it, putting the fading Finnish phone giant into third place. Why the change? Well there is a clue in the way the overall rankings have changed - and that is down to the way Greenpeace determines the scores. Up till last year, the values looked pretty good: Nokia had a ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Greenpeace   Nokia   Hewlett Packard

Academia, industry team up for better green data centers - By Doug Mohney

Explore Views and Opinions on Green IT (Nov 9 2011)

Funded in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF), three universities have teamed up with 15 companies to launch a "holistic approach" collaborative research center for energy efficiency.  Bravo! Binghamton University will be the "focal point" for the Industry/University Cooperative Research Center in Energy-Efficient Electronic Systems (E3S) consortium, according to the school's website, with Villanova University and University of Texas at Arlington also having support centers.    Fifteen companies "representing the entire supply chain for data centers" have signed up as members including Microsoft, IBM, Facebook, Commscope, Bloomberg, General Electric, Corning Inc., Endicott Interconnect Technologies, Emerson Network Power and Emerson Delaware Valley Liebert, Verizon, Comcast and Steel Orca; it's very cool that Facebook (much berated by coal-and-nuclear-powered-server using Greenpeace) keep bubbling up on its own when it comes to greener data centers and energy efficiency. Everyone is going to work together to look at energy efficiency problems holistically ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Greenpeace   National Science Foundation   General Electric