In a series of articles this week, the New York Times refused to pull punches in exposing the dirty secrets of the data center industry as wasteful power users who violate air quality laws and strong-arm overmatched small towns with their might and influence.
There's been no shortage of backlash from tech pundits. To highlight a few, here are responses from: Wired, Slate, Triple Pundit, Slashdot, Datacenter Knowledge and even a 5000-word treatise from Diego Doval.
Microsoft has countered saying the article fails to "recognize that not all data centers are created equal, nor are the operations and software applications running inside those data centers equally utilized."
GigaOm's Katie Fehrenbacher suggests the reporting is "from a time machine" and Dan Woods from Forbes called the series a "sloppy failure." He notes that while the series names Amazon, Facebook and Google, many of the numbers it cites actually come from "IT data centers, not from the state-of-the-art-data centers run by the Internet companies."
Our own contributor Kathrin Winkler with EMC writes about how the articles neglect to mention what the data center industry is doing to be more efficient. She says "if the auto industry had gotten efficient as quickly as the IT industry in the last 40 years, we'd be getting 450,000 miles to the gallon."
Given the prominent spotlight, we thought it appropriate to run through recent GreenBiz coverage on data centers, cloud computing and energy efficiency.
Google, to be sure, is leading the way in investing in clean energy and touting its strategies for highly efficient data center operations.
For its part, Facebook, unveiled data center secrets with a major new initiative designed to share server and data center designs with rivals. The Open Compute Project, dedicated to building the "most efficient computing infrastructures at the lowest possible cost," releases open hardware data from a new center in Oregon, which the company says uses 38 percent less power than existing server farms.
The Facebook facility in Oregon earned LEED certifications, as did a Yahoo site in Nebraska and a sprawling 990,000-square-foot site for a QTS data center in Atlanta, considered the second largest data center in the world.
Next page: eBay and Bloom Energy team up on fuel cell technology for data centers
Electric night photo by Bruce Rolff via Shutterstock
You comment: "The Facebook
You comment:
"The Facebook facility in Oregon earned LEED certifications, as did a Yahoo site in Nebraska and a sprawling 990,000-square-foot site for a QTS data center in Atlanta, considered the second largest data center in the world."
All these LEED certifications are for NEW construction (either LEED NC or LEED CS) These rating systems have nothing to do with operations and the amount of energy consumed within the whole building.
Only one LEED rating system covers all the aspects of operations and energy usage and that's LEED Existing Buildings.
However the real question should not reside in is this or that data center using more or less power than the next one...rather it should be focused on how efficient said data center is against a 'known' standard, (Energy Star, LEED, PUE), but which one?
The LEED Existing Buildings
The LEED Existing Buildings Operations and Maintenance rating system is a valid way to track environmental performance of a building, even a data center. However, as far as I can determine, there are no standalone data centers that have attempted to earn this rating.
On one hand I am not that surprised, as a LEED EBOM rating is mainly used in the commercial market to attract tenants or other revenue bearing entities. Standalone Data Centers generally aren’t competing in that way. However, with all this attention, one might think that it would be one way to recognize and validate the best performers. I'd be interested to hear if there are any standalone data centers out there that are attempting this standard.
Data center power usage and
Data center power usage and emissions are concerns, but you’re right that many data centers have made great strides in improving energy efficiency and mitigating environmental impacts. With data centers being crucial infrastructure for our increasingly digital world, I would like to see the conversation focus on how we can use new technology and design approaches to improve the environmental impact.
Already, the latest technology makes it possible for data centers to realize great reductions in their carbon footprints. One way to do this is by using energy storage systems to provide a more environmentally friendly alternative for on-site back-up power, as these uninterruptible power supplies can reduce energy usage at data centers: http://www.sandc.com/blogs/index.php/2012/09/for-a-greener-data-center-b.... Energy storage also makes it more practical to use intermittent wind and solar energy sources on a broader scale, to support all loads—including data centers. By allowing greater use of renewables to meet electricity demand, energy storage helps counter potential increases in carbon emissions that may result from higher overall electricity usage resulting from data center growth.
It’s great to see companies like Google and Facebook focusing on data center efficiency, and I expect more companies will start to adopt these approaches, too.
Data center power usage and
Data center power usage and emissions are concerns, but you’re right that many data centers have made great strides in improving energy efficiency and mitigating environmental impacts. With data centers being crucial infrastructure for our increasingly digital world, I would like to see the conversation focus on how we can use new technology and design approaches to improve the environmental impact.
Already, the latest technology makes it possible for data centers to realize great reductions in their carbon footprints. One way to do this is by using energy storage systems to provide a more environmentally friendly alternative for on-site back-up power, as these uninterruptible power supplies can reduce energy usage at data centers: http://www.sandc.com/blogs/index.php/2012/09/for-a-greener-data-center-b.... Energy storage also makes it more practical to use intermittent wind and solar energy sources on a broader scale, to support all loads—including data centers. By allowing greater use of renewables to meet electricity demand, energy storage helps counter potential increases in carbon emissions that may result from higher overall electricity usage resulting from data center growth.
It’s great to see companies like Google and Facebook focusing on data center efficiency, and I expect more companies will start to adopt these approaches, too.