Network World: Despite green diet, data centers still gobble power

Like the unfortunate person who continually diets but only seems to gain more weight, power-hungry data centers — despite adopting virtualization and power management techniques — only seem to be consuming more energy than ever, to judge from some of the talks at the Uptime Symposium 2010, held this week in New York.

“There is a freight train coming that most people do not see, and it is that you are going to run out of power and you will not be able to keep your data center cool enough,” Rob Bernard, the chief environmental strategist for Microsoft, told attendees at the conference.

Power usage is not a new issue, of course. In 2006, the U.S. Department of Energy predicted that data center energy consumption would double by 2011 to more than 120 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh). This prediction seems to be playing out: An ongoing survey from the Uptime Institute found that, from 2005 to 2008, the electricity usage of its members’ data centers grew at an average of about 11 percent a year.

But despite all the talk in green computing, data centers don’t seem to be getting more power-efficient. In fact, they seem to be getting worse.

More of the Network World article from Joab Jackson

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.