I am in the midst of designing a new data center for a client and have been trying to balance the requirements of costs, space limitations, maximum number of cabinets and the flexibility to meet the rising and ever-changing power density of the IT equipment loads. Of course, high energy efficiency is a given.

In addition, the client is especially concerned about esthetics and how it will look when a visitor enters the room..........

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power | Energy Star | PUE | Green IT | energy efficiency | Hot Aisle

Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced today that the Department of Energy is awarding $47 million for 14 projects across the country "to support the development of new technologies that can improve energy efficiency in the information technology (IT) and communication technology sectors.”

Under the DOE’s Industrial Technologies Program (ITP), the grants will fund three areas of study.

* Equipment & Software
* Power Supply Chain
* Cooling

While the award details have not been finalized, the participants have been selected and the funds allocated. They range from commercial firms such as HP and IBM to educational institutions such as the California Institute of Technology and Columbia University. Even Yahoo! will receive $9.9 million.......

high density | PUE power | energy efficiency | Green IT | EUE | Infrastructure | servers | Energy Star | data center | power | EPA | DOE

As we enter of the first decade of the new millennium, I began to think about what the first year of the next decade might bring.

First a quick look back, 1999 was a wild time for IT, Y2K anticipation and remediation spelt good economics times for almost anyone who had anything to do with computers. After it was over, the lights were still on and there was still money in their bank statements, everyone sighed a sigh of relief, but many wanted to know if was all an overblown threat…... some Y2K consultants started driving cabs in 2000. Some data centers were still being designed for 35-50 watts per SF, with 500-1000 watts per rack. The hot aisle cold aisle concept was not yet a commonly accepted standard practice.

EPA | power | data center | Infrastructure | Green IT | EUE | energy efficiency | cooling | high density | containers | Hot Aisle | Cold Aisle

Containerized data centers are the latest and greatest things in high density data centers or are they?. Let’s look at what a containerized data center offers, and what is really involved with planning, outfitting and operating these new data center innovations.

For those that did not read “Valet Parking your Containerized Data Center”, I postulated that a midsize company’s CTO had taken the plunge and committed to boldly move forward with a containerized data center strategy. Everything seemed to be going smoothly, and their new “data center in a box” arrived in only 6 weeks after it was ordered by our intrepid hero. The problems began when it came time “to just plug it in”, since it was ordered complete with 1000 new servers all pre-installed and presumably ready go.

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high density | Cold Aisle | Hot Aisle | containers | energy efficiency | power | Infrastructure | data center

So maybe EUE is PUE after all, but different….

On November 12 the EPA released the finalized direction for their new Energy Star for Data Centers program. This is the follow-up to the Sept 29th presentation which I first summarized last month. (Move Over PUE - Here Comes EUE) As the EPA’s Energy Star for Data Centers program progresses toward finalization, they have decided to base the EUE metric (Energy Usage Efficiency) on The Green Grid’s PUE (Power Usage Efficiency) metric, but with a twist. However, instead of measuring power in KW they will be using “Energy” as measured in BTUs or more specifically, millions of BTUs, used over a 12 (or 11) month period. BTU not KW, confused? What, your data center metering (assuming that you are doing metering), only measures volts, amps, KVA and KW? You aren’t burning gas, oil or coal as the primary source of electricity?

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EPA | power | Energy Star | data center | Infrastructure | EUE | PUE | energy efficiency | Green IT