Digital Realty Trust gets LEED Gold,transforming a 90 old print plant to a Green Data Center

ComputerWorld reports on Digital Realty Trust achieving LEED Gold certification for Data Center upgrade.

Upgrading older hardware with energy-efficient components is an arguably green business choice: By extending the life of your machines rather than trading them in for brand-new ones, you reduce the world's e-waste pile -- while saving yourself some cash. Digital Realty Trust Inc., which owns, acquires and manages technology-related real estate worldwide, took that philosophy a step further. The company transformed part of a 90-year-old printing plant in Chicago into the world's first LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) gold-certified data center.

"This project shatters the myth that LEED certification can only be achieved within newer facilities," says Jim Smith, vice president of engineering at Digital Realty.

And, passes on a best practice on monitoring the data center.

Measurements are key

Features of this project include sophisticated tools for measuring energy consumption. "These are not expensive, but they provide critical data that let you understand what is happening in the data center. Every data center should have this, particularly since it is such a small investment and provides such valuable information," Smith said. "Step 1 for energy-efficient operations is always to have a way to measure."

There are also tools outside the facility to monitor the air temperature. "The equipment makes sure the air is clean and helps us improve performance of the ventilation system and improve indoor air quality," he said.

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Ken Brill Champions Energy Czar as Path to Green Data Center at Uptime Institute Conference ,will it work?

In Ken Brill's opening keynote, after going through the background of energy studies in data centers, the path Ken Brill presents is the idea of an Energy Czar, an executive top down position to support a Green Data Center initiative.

This is nice in theory and is a method to sell a green data center program at the executive level. I question whether this is effective though. Part of my skepticism is raised by the fact that McKinsey is the sponsor of the study.

The problem with an Energy Czar is the job becomes a political job negotiating ownership and control of data center capital expenditures and operating expenditures while negotiating new SLAs and technical requirements. The term Czar is appropriate to describe the hierarchy and politics for the job.

I am trying to imagine how this would work.

One simple concept Mike Manos explained in his keynote is to use PUE to communicate the overhead to run data centers. Overhead costs are numbers executives understand. And, once execs understand how Green Data Center programs can affect overhead, projects are approved to improve efficiencies.

Is the PUE method a simpler way to put a Green Data Center initiative in place?

Can you get the executives all nodding their head when they understand how Green Data Center initiatives reduce overhead?

On Weds, there will be a presentation of the McKinsey report, and I'll be able to comment more on the idea of an energy czar to Green Data Centers.

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Microsoft's Mike Manos Opening Keynote Uptime Institute, Green Enterprise Computing

The opening of the Uptime Institute Symposium started with Pitt Turner, saying "what are we doing here?" Green Enterprise Computing is a timely topic for the industry event. I've seen Mike present before, and here is what I got out of Mike's latest presentation as new information to digest.

  1. Mike's call to action for all was to stop being information hogs, and to share with the industry. He gave numerous example, and here are a few Mike shared.
  2. Mike emphasized that in spite of a focus on technology. Microsoft has found having the right people and processes makes bigger impact than technology . Mike states over 50% of data center outages are caused by human error. This contrasts a common method to invest in multiple layers of infrastructure redundancy to achieve uptime.Mike was proud of Microsoft's ability to have a 100% facilities uptime over 7 years by implementing strong and disciplined maintenance programs. Also, redundant infrastructure creates more energy waste.
  3. Technology is not the only answer to energy efficiency. People are the opportunity. Microsoft achieved a PUE improvement from 2.2 to 1.8 with no new technology just by people making changes to existing systems in one of their older facilities.
  4. Mike didn't say this, but bottom line he emphasizes an Amazon.com approach in getting data on everything, and they'll figure out what to do with it after by giving people the information to do the right thing.

It is amazing thing  to see how Microsoft has risen from nowhere a year ago to be the leader in the Green Enterprise Computing with Mike Manos, delivering the opening keynote.

I'll keep blogging more, but I should socialize for now.

For good notes on what Mike presented previously at AFCOM Data Center World go to John Rath's Blog post.

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Is it Possible Future Government Regulation - Environmental Impact Records

Sitting in the bar last night at the Swan Hotel, the location of the Uptime Institute's Symposium 2008, I met Buck on vacation with his family from St. Louis. It turns out Buck works for Emerson Electric in procurement for electrical components, and it was a fun chat about the industry and the perspective he has sourcing around the world.  He gets an interesting economic view of things when he interacts with markets for copper, plastics, and all the components to build things data centers need to run.

One of the interesting things he mentioned is new regulations have started and are gaining more momentum, requiring companies keep records of complete chemical composition for all components used in their manufacturing process.

With possible eWaste issues for data centers on the horizon, is it possible that data centers would need environmental impacts records from their suppliers? And, then required to pass that information on as part of end life?

You may laugh, but 20 years ago when working on power supplies with Aztec, now owned by Emerson Electric, we would have never thought you would need complete records of chemical composition for a power supply.

Given large data centers are huge resource consumers run by some of the richest organizations in the world, it is easy for government regulators to create new regulations thinking data center operators can afford the costs to support an environmental impact record.

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Sun buys Processor Startup to improve performance and power consumption

Sun purchased processor start-up Montalvo systems for asynchronous processor core technology, potentially improving performance and power consumption. The ideas makes sense to mix different processor core technologies to meet the different needs.

Montalvo is believed to be working on a low-power processor that aims to compete with chips from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices. The unique feature of Montalvo's design is the use of asynchronous processor cores. Instead of multiple, identical cores found in Intel's chips, Montalvo reportedly plans to use different types of cores, some more powerful than others, on the same chip to improve performance and keep power consumption low.

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