Data center management is currently undergoing a period of great change, much of which is being driven by two factors: new technologies and increasing demands. Data center managers are struggling to keep pace with growing capacity needs while working under the constraints of tightened budgets and energy efficiency initiatives.

Verizon is getting fuel cells for the project from Hillsboro, Oregon-based ClearEdge Power, which will install its PureCell Model 400 fuel-cell systems at the network and data center services company's California, New Jersey and New York sites. 

That is why The Green Grid (TGG) tells us that Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) is not meant to be used for comparing one data center to another. What set of data center types can we devise to compare energy efficiency between data centers of similar types?

Vycon, maker of flywheel-based energy storage systems, announced that data center services provider EasyStreet Online Services ordered additional VDC-XE flywheel systems to expand the back-up capacity of its data center. EasyStreet has had Vycon systems run at its facility, and this is an additional order. The company has now deployed a total of about 800kW of flywheel energy storage capacity

Since energy efficiency numbers for the data center facility infrastructure have improved so much over the last few years and have begun to approach the perfect PUE of 1.00, the pressure to improve efficiency has moved to the IT side of the equation.

A new standard developed by Singapore’s Infocomm Development Authority and Building and Construction Authority for green data center design now takes into account new data centers. The BCA-IDA Green Mark for Data Centres launched in October last year previously covered data centers occupying purpose-built buildings or are part of a larger building.

Facebook has detailed how it has incorporated energy efficiency technologies into its “first” Prineville data center in the US, with a video on its Facebook page posted yesterday. The video outlines its efforts with free-air cooling, how its Open Compute efforts contribute to efficiency, how it recovers water and uses a solar farm on the site to power its office activities. Facebook Prineville facility manager Ken Pratchett leads the tour.

There is a widespread belief that improving the resilience of a data center UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) installation means that its energy efficiency will decrease and its running costs will increase. 

In February, U.S. representatives Anna G. Eshoo and Mike Rogers introduced the Energy Efficient Government Technology Act focused on datacenters. While the bill features provisions around government datacenters requiring annual evaluations of federal data centers for energy efficiency and requiring that federal data center energy usage data be publically available, as importantly it requires an update to a 2007 Report to Congress that has formed the baseline for data center energy efficiency in the U.S. generally.

Icelandic data center operator Verne Global, which opened the first phase of its data center in October 2011, is expanding with plans to go live with its second phase in Q3 this year. Verne built its data center, used for colocation, in an 18-hectare campus in Keflavik, and uses power from Iceland’s dual-sourced renewable energy power grid and free cooling technology to provide a 100% carbon-neutral data center offering.

“We are proud to announce that our Liebert HPC free cooling chillers comply with the rigorous standards set by the ECA scheme, emphasising our full commitment to driving sustainable business,” Stefano Mozzato, precision cooling marketing director EMEA,

Emerson said to support the targets the European Commission released a voluntary Code of Conduct on Data Centres Energy Efficiency, the European Commission has focused on the data center sector because it expects electricity consumed in data centers

... plant and computer room air handler units, resulting in an optimized cooling flow to the data room floor and increased overall cooling efficiency. Many of these energy efficiency measures had been proven first in the company's other Sacramento data center.

Equinix has been granted 'Corporate Participant' status in the European Commission's voluntary Code of Conduct for data center energy efficiency and environmental management. 

Digital Realty Trust, Vigilent Corp. and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory announced the results of a joint study focused on improving the energy efficiency of a data center designed, owned and operated by Digital Realty. The facility used for this initiative was Digital Realty's 135,000 square foot data center located in El Segundo, California. 

Bharti Airtel, a global telecommunications company with operations in 20 countries across Asia and Africa, has launched a new green data center in Mumbai. The state-of-the-art facility has been designed to achieve 1.7- 1.75 Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), making it one of the most energy efficient facilities in India. 

Apple wants to double the generation capacity of its fuel-cell plant next to its massive data center in Maiden, North Carolina. The company has filed papers with the state’s utility regulators, notifying them of the plan to increase the size of the fuel-cell installation, which will bring its total capacity to 10MW, the Charlotte Observer reported.

The Managing Partner of i3 Solutions, who will be speaking at DatacenterDynamics Converged London on Thursday, talks about the design of mission-critical environments and data center energy consumption

What is on your radar at the moment? I am wrestling with a few concepts at the moment that I am sure will be aired at DCD London:  Water consumption, server utilization and no-load power of commercial servers and, importantly, further education and professional registration of data center technicians, technician engineers and engineers. What will you be discussing at DCD London? Energy efficiency of the infrastructure versus the energy efficiency of the IT hardware – this is the key to lowering

Five months after announcing it had set up an ‘edge location’ in Sydney, Amazon Web Services will start running operations from two dedicated facilities in the city from tomorrow EST. According to a report by Australian tech news site itnews, Amazon has established two data centers in Sydney to reach its Asia Pacific audience, the primary facility being in Equinix’s SYD3 data center.