Green IT & Green Technology
Research, opinion, and case studies into green IT, green computing and green technologies.
In the past few years the debate over global warming has shifted dramatically. There is no longer any serious debate about whether it is occurring or whether human actions are largely responsible. The question now is what to do about it. We believe the IT industry has an important, and underappreciated, role to play in global efforts to blunt the worst effects of climate change.
Australia is in the midst of a green building boom. Property owners and developers are striving for better and better star ratings for their new office, retail, residential, healthcare and education projects, and are rapidly retrofitting existing facilities.
John Lamb, author of The Greening of IT, explains the basic environmental impact of IT — including data centers' consumption of fossil fuel-based electric energy — and lays the foundation for solutions to those problems.
Most Recent Green IT & Green Technology
Dangerous rhetoric and over-simplification still surround the effectiveness of so called "Green IT" strategies and it's not just the IT industry at fault. A recent report in the Australian regarding the Federal Government's replacement of some 140,000 desktop personal computers outlined the government's need to reduce energy consumption and provide for a "greener" IT footprint.
Many businesses are utterly dependent on the efficient and optimal functioning of data centres. There are several stumbling blocks on the way to this objective. These include: High energy usage, the need for complicated cooling systems and aging infrastructure. Add to this the increasing demand for green data centre solutions and you can see why data centre design is such a challenging field. The purpose of this helpful article is to explain some of the challenges and propose workable solutions.
Success for global green IT depends on the continued collaboration among groups within your company, among technology vendors, data center design and build businesses, energy utilities, governments, and other external organizations.
The current global economic recession has squeezed IT budgets, hindered capital expenditure and generally slowed the growth of IT development. However, according to a report just published by independent market analyst Datamonitor, 'Can Green IT Bloom in an Economic Downturn', it may also prove to be a significant upside to the market for green IT.
Do you actually know how much energy your data centre consumes each year? Neither did South East Water, until they placed a meter on the electrical switchboard that revealed they were using nearly 80KW of energy – day and night. South East Water also had a number of data centre challenges that needed to be resolved at a time when the business was growing rapidly.
IntroductionIn the data center, the advent of high-density computing equipment has sent power usage soaring. For instance, servers and their supporting infrastructure consumed an estimated 1.5% of US electricity in 2006, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. As a result, power consumption and other "green" issues are fast becoming the information technology (IT) industry's biggest challenge. Inevitably, as these concerns grow, focus will broaden to all types of IT equipment, settling on one of the thirstiest devices; the local area network (LAN) switch, which can consume several thousand watts.
Part 1: Drivers for Data Centre energy efficiency WHAT’S THE PROBLEM? Data centres are the work horses that support internet connectivity, and they are massive power users. Few people understand the real impact that the computing world makes on our collective carbon footprint. To put the issue in perspective it is often quoted in terms of “equivalent houses”. A typical medium size 2000m2, 4000 kilowatt (kW) load, 2005 build Data Centre has an annual energy consumption equivalent to about 3000 2-3 bedroom homes.
Part 2: Energy Efficiency improvements that can save you money TODAY WHAT ARE THE SHORT TERM FIXES? This paper is part 2 of a series for IT and Property professionals who are concerned about energy consumption in Data Centres.
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