Nov
12
WRITTEN BY:
Greg Goode
Thursday, 12 November 2009
Every year, the clothing industry attempts to re-invent itself as fashionistas boldly declare that some colour is the new black. In the case of the data centre industry, green is the new black. But this isn’t a fad or even re-invention, it’s r-evolution.
The data centre environment, over the last 4–5 years, has been codified in various documents by leading industry authorities. One could describe this codification, which was based on old ideas, as the ‘black’. It describes all elements of the data centre and in particular the energy component, although not from an environmental perspective.
Codifying the contemporary data centre (specifying it in black) has inevitably meant that data centre design and construction has taken a very conservative approach to distribution of energy and its use in the data centre. The industry standards and principles in the initial stages of the data centre evolution were loosely coupled and there was a multitude of ways to build the early data centre. Most of it was based on the last quarter of the 20th century’s old computer room (‘she’ll be right’) methods and requirements. It was becoming plainly obvious that the industry, worldwide, required a common set of standards and guiding principles to address immediate and emerging IT technologies.
Enter leading industry authorities which realised that data centres have become discrete technology entities with their own design parameters: groups such as the IEEE, the Uptime Institute, The Green Grid, leading manufacturers and vendors of chip technology and facility infrastructure, to mention a few. These parties have brought their broad industry knowledge to bear on the problem and codified the data centre environment. This has enabled us to select a data centre site and provide design input to the architectural, structural and engineering (electrical, mechanical, security, fire suppression, etc.) components to align redundancy and resiliency levels.
But even with the input of these authorities, the data centre construct was still black. And energy usage and its effect on the environment, with all its implied meanings, was not yet an input to the data centre criteria.
So, in a data centre sense, ‘black’ conjures up images of electrical energy that has been produced by some kind of hydrocarbon, predominately from coal; masses of CO2 produced by its combustion and the electrical power produced to drive the data centre IT, its cooling, its power train; and energy wasted through poor architectural design in the choice of insulation, construction materials, etc.
Modern society thrives on data, but it comes at a cost to the environment. Thus, as we have seen in recent years, all aspects of the data centre are being scrutinised for energy improvements. Who would have thought that manipulating 1’s and 0’s would consume approximately 2% of all electrical energy on this earth and produce so much heat? The data centre industry has recognised that it’s an intense energy user and becoming more so as the appetite for data storage and computation grows worldwide.
Enter the new, fashionable data centre black … which is green.
In the last few years, the green revolution has taken hold—a green tsunami is enveloping the world. It pervades government, industry and the domestic environments. You can’t listen to any media nowadays without some green-related message being delivered.
There is a body of evidence emerging in the data centre industry that says ‘green’ has definitely taken hold here, too—talking about energy efficiency, sustainability and climate change is de rigueur. For a litmus test of this ‘going green’ in the industry, read the numerous data centre articles that appear every day on the web, read a hardcopy magazine, or attend any forum and trade show anywhere in the world. The word ‘green’ is mentioned at every turn and if you haven’t noticed Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD) consultants have become part of the current data centre team.
Whether it be architectural or engineering (electrical, mechanical, hydraulics) the problem of improving energy efficiency for a data centre’s overall sustainability has produced a plethora of ideas and products. Of course, there is no obligation on the part of the data centre user to embrace this new black … I mean green. They can quite happily go on blighting the world if they wish. But national government regulations, driven by world forums—Kyoto kicked it off, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has provided the body of information to support it (though many would challenge the participants), and Copenhagen will only strengthen the actions—public conscience and the real motivator, regulatory and energy costs, will eventually weed the old black from the industry.
Green is the new black, but unlike the fashion industry, the data centre industry won’t be just morphing back to black when the users tire of the colour next year. The data centre industry has definitely changed its colour and it’s green, green, green … albeit in many shades.