GREEN NETWORKING


Does the data centre industry have an appetite for green IT? How green is a green data centre? By Roger Keenan, Managing Director, City Lifeline.


The public has become increasingly more aware of data centres over the last few years. In parallel with this, there has also been a steep increase in public awareness of environmental issues, especially in the face of the global warming debate. Despite this, the idea of a green data


centre has not yet really hit the public imagination - or been taken up by the media. This is set to change however, in the


Roger Keenan talks about data centre carbon issues


same way that transport-related carbon emissions have already reached the public consciousness. As a result, the data centre industry needs to be ahead of the game and get its green credentials in order - before it rises to media and public attention. At the very highest levels, there is


some recognition of this. The recently announced RenewIT initiative by the European Commission is an example - this aims to make the whole European data centre industry 80 per cent powered from renewable and sustainable resources, largely focusing on better information, energy usage profiles and environmental performance within data centres.


One small step Whilst a small step on its own, this move does indicate an increasing awareness of the significance of the data centre, its green profile and how much room for improvement still exists.


At the other end of the scale, there is


an element of `green fatigue’ within the data centre industry. People have been talking about greening things for so long that industry practitioners no longer react with enthusiasm. That is perhaps understandable,


because becoming energy efficient and sustainable is not a project with a budget and a timescale, but a long continuous process. As part of this process, awareness will


build, and a way of thinking develop whereby green issues are not something addressed after all the major decisions have been made, but considered as part of every major decision, in the same way that provision of fire exits is now considered as part of every decision in a building design. Organisations and consultancies


specifying and buying colocation and data centre services have become more aware of environmental credentials and selecting green operations. Larger organisations now often have


written environmental policies and those will be reflected into their buying decisions. Green data centres are here because the customers want them and operators have to respond to that. When environmental issues first


began moving up the agenda in the political sphere, it didn’t take long for a rift to form between people designing data centres and the politicians with bright ideas that sounded good to voters but had little grounding in reality.


There have been clashes over


proposals for London data centres powered from wind or solar power, as a pre-condition for planning permission being granted, for example. There have also been instances of proposals for data centres powered exclusively by burning straw.


In amongst the more crackpot ideas


are some that work. For example, using waste energy from a green data centre to heat local community housing has proved to be a viable idea that has been successfully implemented.


Energy economics The energy economics may not be viable on their own, but as a means to gain planning permission, they help to enable projects that might otherwise not have happened. Another interesting proposal is to build a data centre close to the points where very high-pressure gas mains convert to low pressure for distribution. Compressing the gas at one end of


the pipeline consumes a huge amount of energy. The expansion of the gas at the other end releases the same energy - currently wasted - which could power and cool a data centre. It will be interesting to see if anyone has the vision and courage to build such a data centre, with an essentially zero carbon footprint. For those who are involved in data


centres on a daily basis, green issues should always be part of their life, but there are still many data centres where no one even thinks about such things. The challenge here is that many


data centres are still operating inside organisations on a legacy basis, with old communications rooms or server rooms providing IT, telephony and communications services for the entire organisation. In many instances, no one is really


Servers: only 10 to 20% utilisation? 10 NETCOMMS europe Volume IV Issue 3 2014


in charge of these systems - and there is nobody to consider environmental impact or green data centre issues. Gradually, however, these centres are being replaced and, often, the organisation migrates to a cloud implementation or a hybrid cloud implementation. The good news here is that that


migration removes the activities taking www.netcommseurope.com


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