GreenLink Alliance’s Executive Director on Taking the Mountain Less Traveled
Posted by Cory Vanderpool November 19th, 2009 
1 Comment
I believe I was born to help protect the environment. My first vivid memory of the awe-inspiring power of nature came when, as a young teenager, I traveled with my family to the remote wilderness of Colorado for a pack trip deep into the Rocky Mountains. I remember feeling humbled by the Earth’s bounty and overwhelmed by the pure wildness of the landscape that surrounded me. I promised myself then that I would imprint that feeling in my soul forever.
Now, 15 years years later, I can picture that moment in time as if it were yesterday. Today, however, that memory is even more precious as I reflect on the lessons I have learned and the satisfaction I feel as I lead GreenLink Alliance, a non-profit start up, towards success. The beautiful irony is that my life, at least to this point, has brought me full circle, back to the mountaintop where it all began.
Greenbuild 2009 – The Three P’s in Action
Posted by 3p Guest Author November 18th, 2009 0 Comments
By Amy Berry
I recently returned from the United States Green Building Council’s (USGBC) 2009 Greenbuild Expo in Phoenix, Arizona. The conference boasted more than 28,000 attendees and more than 1800 exhibitors. Former Vice President Al Gore gave the keynote speech as leaders of the green building world converged to discuss the future of building and the impact this community of architects, designers, builders, project managers and corporate sustainability managers can have on mother earth’s future. Attendees snacked on organic appetizers and drank from compostable plastic cups. Student volunteers filled the convention center excited, to be able to participate in the event, and in exchange spent their time sorting attendees’ garbage into the appropriate recycling, composting or trash bins.
As one of those 1800 exhibitors (we had a full Windspire wind turbine up in our booth) I spent the majority of the show on the expo hall floor. The energy on the floor was described as electric, engaging and awesome by those tweeting with the hashtag #Greenbuild and by some of the more than 100 media in attendance. If you believe that smarter buildings that use less energy and water are a real solution to global warming, this was the place to see and be seen. The USGBC must be applauded for educating so many on real solutions to the global climate crisis.
Green Building supports 7.9 Million U.S. Jobs
Posted by Jeff Siegel November 17th, 2009 1 Comment
I’m not typically one to debate the merits of green jobs because I see the value of green job creation every single day.
Sure, there are a number of studies out there that question the validity of some green jobs or seek to find a more precise definition of what a green job is. And this is all relevant stuff.
But there are also studies that I have to call out as being nothing more than politically-charged rhetoric.
Like the “7 Myths About Green Jobs” study that came out earlier this year.
I won’t get into the nuts and bolts, but despite what seemed like an honest approach to a valid question: How do special interest groups calculate how many green jobs new energy policies would create? I quickly found myself reading what hinted at some questionable intentions hiding behind the guise of academic research.
AdaptivCool Greens Data Centers by Solving Air Distribution Problem
Posted by Kathryn Siranosian November 16th, 2009 0 Comments
Odds are, your data center feels as cold as a meat locker.
And if it does, you’re wasting energy –and money.
Data centers don’t need to be ice cold, says Rajesh Nair, the founder and CTO of Degree Controls, Inc., based in New Hampshire. Rather than over-compensating for server heat loads, he explains, companies need to focus on what’s really important: air distribution around the servers.
“In a data center, the heat load keeps changing over time and place,” Nair says. “But, the typical data centers has a static cooling system. That means there’s static cooling for dynamic heat flow –and that’s why there’s a problem.”
In fact, once you change the air distribution in your data center, it’s likely that you’ll be able to shut down 20 to 40 percent of your air conditioners, he adds.
But, how can you re-design the air flow?
eBay Builds State-of-the-art Green Data Center in Utah
Posted by Kathryn Siranosian November 13th, 2009 3 Comments
Online auction site eBay is building a $334 million state-of-the-art, environmentally responsible data center in the suburbs of Salt Lake City, Utah.
eBay says this data center will showcase the best and most innovative thinking in green data center design, technology, construction and operation, and Triple Pundit asked Mazen Rawashdeh, VP Technology Operations, eBay Inc., to fill us in on all the details.
Triple Pundit: Does this new data center represent new capacity, or will it consolidate other eBay data centers?
Mazen Rawashdeh: The new center is being opened as part of a corporate-level, four-year data center consolidation strategy that is moving us from a handful of co-located data center facilities – largely space that we rent from data center providers – to space that we own and can manage to the highest standards in both cost and environmental efficiency. In short, it’s a consolidation strategy. Our business model is unique; we know the rhythms and availability requirements that are specific to eBay’s platform. By designing an environment for our data and compute power – both in terms of physical data center, hardware and software infrastructure that goes into it – we can innovate and manage it in the most efficient way possible. The facility in Utah will host the core technology that runs our business – including the eBay.com marketplace, PayPal and some of our adjacencies, including StubHub.com and Shopping.com.
Relationships: The Key Ingredient to a Green Data Center
Posted by 3p Guest Author November 13th, 2009 0 Comments
By Mike Leber, president and founder of Hurricane Electric
Green data centers have been getting more attention in the media in the last six months. Although much of that coverage has been on how green data centers are reducing carbon footprint, they also serve another importance purpose: reducing data center operating costs. Given that energy costs can account for up to 30 percent of a company’s IT budget, there is substantial economic incentive to improve energy efficiency in the data center.
Whether it is an existing data center or a new center in the process of being built, decisions need to be made not only on the type of technologies that will be utilized within a center, but also the facility’s design. Vendor relationships as well as one with the local power company are key to creating an energy efficient data center.
It is critical to have open discussions with vendors to find energy-efficient products. It is not only important to know how the product works, but how it may work in an energy-efficient mode, why it is energy efficient and how much energy may actually be saved. Only through open discussions with vendors, can these answers be found and the right energy-efficient sever, UPS, HVAC system or airflow management solution be deployed.
Tips From UPS: Why and How to Start Greening Your Data Center
Posted by Kathryn Siranosian November 12th, 2009 2 Comments
We’ve all heard the good news: Improving efficiencies at your data center is a sure-fire way to cut energy costs and reduce GHG emissions.
But, let’s face it. The prospect of greening a data center can seem overwhelming. After all, data centers are complicated, unwieldy and high-tech. Even the most intrepid sustainability manager may take a look around, and be left scratching his head, wondering, “Where do we start?”
“That’s a very good question,” says Joe Parrino, Facilities Engineer of UPS’s Windward Data Center near Atlanta. “You start by getting educated and fully understanding the problem.”
That’s how they did it at Windward, one of UPS’s two largest data centers. Originally constructed in 1995, Windward monitors all of the information about the 15 million packages UPS delivers daily worldwide. Recently, Parrino led the facility through a dramatic energy makeover, a series of varied changes that cut energy consumption by 15% and reduced UPS’s CO2 emissions by 5.5 million pounds annually.
Enabling Sustainable Data Centers with Tightly-Integrated, Advanced Component Technologies
Posted by 3p Guest Author November 11th, 2009 0 Comments
By Dr. John Busch, president and co-founder of Schooner Information Technology
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, for every 100 units of energy piped into a typical data center, only three are used for useful computing. These inefficiencies are the result of very low (~10 percent) utilization of the data center’s computing servers which creates intolerable heat and energy issues as well as sprawling space requirements.
To make matters worse, experts predict the number of servers to double or even triple over the next few years as a result of booming demand for Internet capacity. Fortunately, the emergence of advanced component technologies, such as multi-core processors, low-latency interconnects, and flash memory, hold the promise to transform the data center through radical improvements in performance, scalability and power consumption.
Data Center Pulse: Finding Green Solutions for Energy-Guzzling Servers and Cooling Systems
Posted by Kathryn Siranosian November 10th, 2009 1 Comment
Think of it as a support group for data center gurus.
Better yet, think of it as a support group on steroids for data center gurus.
Data Center Pulse (DCP) is a non-profit, open source community where data center end users can share information, voice opinions, define innovative next-generation solutions, and ultimately influence activities and trends in the industry.
Members can participate in LinkedIn discussions, download program proposals and presentations, stay up-to-date with breaking IT news, watch informational videos, network, blog…and more.
Founded only a year ago (in September 2008), DCP already boasts 1,240 members, representing more than 600 companies, spread across 45 different countries. It’s an exclusive group of data center owners, operators and users — and in this uniquely specialized community, consultants or individuals with primary roles in a sales, marketing or business development capacity are noticeably (and purposely) absent.*
Opening Up Fort Knox: Looking for Transparency to Foster Data Center Innovation
Posted by 3p Guest Author November 10th, 2009 1 Comment
By David Zwerin, Sustainability Marketing Consultant
Photo Courtesy of Inhabitat
While researching the sustainability of data centers, I became frustrated with the lack of corporate transparency around the environmental impacts associated with their data centers. Many companies talk about how efficient their data centers are, but stop short at providing hard facts, data, and relevant numbers to authenticate their story.
Data centers have become the new Fort Knox, housing everything from Facebook photos to medical records, and data driven companies are unwilling, or so it appears, to share any environmental impact information about their data center. There is a belief that disclosing this information, competitors will reverse engineer the environmental impact data to shed light on the capacity of a data center to gain a competitive advantage.
As a result, there is an underestimated perception of the true environmental impact of data centers. To truly create innovation in this sector, more transparency is necessary to stimulate an industry-wide discourse on the true environmental risks of data centers, enabling companies to develop effective strategies and best practices for reducing the impact of their data management.
What it Takes to Power the Internet: Quantifying Our Online Obsession
Posted by Ashwin Seshagiri November 10th, 2009 3 Comments
Click on image to englarge
US Infrastructure ran an article last month about how much energy we use to power the Internet. The above is an in interesting representation of what that power consumptions looks like. From updating our Facebook profiles to reading the news to watching last night’s sitcoms, the Internet has subsumed nearly every aspect of our lives.
3p’s Data Center Week: Creating a Context for Green IT
Posted by Ashwin Seshagiri November 9th, 2009 0 Comments
For many of us, the data center is something we all know exists; and as we have been reading more and more, it is something that needs “greening” to improve large corporations’ environmental footprints.
Yet, aside from the select few that work and think about data centers on a day-to-day basis, the majority of the public, business leaders, and even sustainability experts couldn’t explain how data centers work, let alone what it takes to make them more efficient and environmentally friendly.
Over the course of the week, 3p will be showcasing the perspectives of experts and thought leaders in the data center industry, as well trend analysis, in an attempt to create a context for how they fit within the larger economic and environmental bottom lines.
Enterprise Sustainability and Greening Data Centers
Posted by 3p Guest Author November 9th, 2009 0 Comments
By Dr. Zen Kishimoto, Principal Analyst, Alta Terra Research Network
Some years ago, energy was cheap. Few people in corporations paid attention to how much energy was consumed company wide, much less in data centers. More recently, however, several factors have changed this scene completely. These factors included much higher demands for computing and storage due to the rapid increase in online processing in both business and consumer sectors and, consequently, denser server concentration to maximize the use of space in data centers.
According to a 2007 EPA report, power consumption by U.S. data centers doubled between 2001 and 2006. In 2006, data centers used 1.5 percent of all the power consumed in the United Sates. Without any remedy, consumption will double again by 2011. As a testimony to this study, many operators have recently begun feeling pain at several points in their data centers, which are experiencing power shortages, high costs, and extensive needs for cooling.
Data Centers as Information Factories
Posted by 3p Guest Author November 9th, 2009 0 Comments
By Dave Ohara, Data Center Consultant and Publisher of GreenM3.com
Photo Courtesy of Google
I have been writing on the Green Data Center topic for more than two years. After more than 1,000 blog posts, one of the things that I have found is the name “data center” doesn’t mean what most people who don’t work on them think they are. In the past, there was one corporate building that was the place where data was housed for the corporation. But now, that no longer is the case.
A data center is a facility used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems. New technologies and practices were designed to handle the scale and the operational requirements that came with the dot com boom. The standard for Fortune 500 companies now is to have multiple data centers around the world to provide information availability, disaster recovery, and reliability. What does it mean to have multiple centers of data? If you green the data center, what is actually getting greened? And how?
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