BY Greg Goode ON
Thursday, 3 February 2011
 Principles are wonderful things.
All throughout the data centre industry there are design principles. They pepper reference guides, vendor documents and design standards.
These principles provide guidance that is rooted in fundamental truths and theorems, though they are not specifically tying data centre users to a specific design outcome.
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BY Greg Goode ON
Thursday, 11 November 2010
If ever a word has lost its significance, it's the word 'green' when it's used to imply environmental sustainability and energy efficiency ... especially when it's applied to the data centre industry.
So, let's disregard 'green' and instead talk 'energy efficiency'. And, more specifically, let's talk about the cost of ignoring it.
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BY Greg Goode ON
Thursday, 23 September 2010
Years ago, data centre users and data centre consultants would have considered an 'energy-efficient data centre' to be an oxymoron. Ditto 'ecologically-sustainable data centre'. Data centres were considered energy soaks, and their construction was more like a cold war bunker.
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BY Greg Goode ON
Thursday, 1 July 2010
Damn the laws of thermodynamics! There are power losses all over the data centre which contribute to poor energy utilisation. These losses present themselves as heat. If it wasn’t for energy losses we would have perpetual motion data centres.
Loss of energy in data centres has focused the minds of many in the industry, especially since the advent of the 21st century, high-density computing and our obsession with global warming. And out of the desire to produce the most energy-efficient data centre has come one profound acronym: PUE.
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BY Greg Goode ON
Thursday, 17 December 2009
Kyoto, Copenhagen, climate change, global warming, greenhouse gases, emissions trading scheme, carbon tax, carbon capture and sequestration, carbon offset, sustainability, renewable energy sources, data centres. Data centres?! Hang on. Back up. How do data centres fit in that list?
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BY Greg Goode ON
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.
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BY Greg Goode ON
Thursday, 10 September 2009
You’ve probably heard the term ‘follow the sun’. Effectively, it is saying that as one set of staff are finishing for the day as the sun goes down in their part of the world, another set of staff, in a totally different location and time zone, are commencing their day. It’s used as a way to describe how, for example, call centres, help desks and financial dealing rooms can provide continuous service across a 24-hour day without having to maintain a shift roster of many people in one location. That all seems to make sense.
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BY Greg Goode ON
Thursday, 13 August 2009
Real-estate agents constantly chant the mantra ‘location, location, location’. Well, the data centre industry’s mantra is fast becoming ‘energy, energy, energy’.
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