Data Center Power Demands Grew Again in 2012

The year 2012 saw increase in data center usage. And so did data center power consumption. A massive growth in power consumption figures was reported by Data Center Dynamics 2012 Global Census. This year saw power consumption grow by an incredible 63% globally. In terms of figures, the consumption figure for 2011 was 24 Gigawatts and in 2012 this was 38 Gigawatts. Amazing, isn’t it?

This whopping increase has resulted in both enterprises and the IT industry looking for ways to reduce power consumption in data centers. The major reason for the rise is the compounded rise in cooling costs and other heat management power consumption that occurs when more equipment draws more power in the data center.

Alternative cooling solutions, efficient servers with better Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) ratings, and virtualization are all measures that are going to see maximum investments in the coming years to tackle the problem of excessive power consumption within data centers.

With more attention to planning and infrastructure management, IT enterprises are confident that they can cope with the rising demands of data center based computing services without causing a massive drain of power resources. The future does look promising with innovation and thinking going into the efforts aimed at reducing the power consumption.

Alex Carroll

Managing Member at Lifeline Data Centers

Alex, co-owner, is responsible for all real estate, construction and mission critical facilities: hardened buildings, power systems, cooling systems, fire suppression, and environmentals. Alex also manages relationships with the telecommunications providers and has an extensive background in IT infrastructure support, database administration and software design and development. Alex architected Lifeline’s proprietary GRCA system and is hands-on every day in the data center.