“There’s no simple path to green
computing, but there are some low-hanging fruit,” Curtis notes in “Green:
The New Computing Coat of Arms?”, a
paper he co-authored with Joseph Williams, the CTO of WW Enterprise Sales
at Microsoft. “You can spin the dial on
some straightforward actions, such as
orienting racks of servers in a data center to exhaust their heat in a uniform
direction, thus reducing overall cooling costs…. A comprehensive plan for
achieving green computing really does
require an architectural approach.”
David Wang, the data center architect for Teradata, has specialized in
thermal management solutions for the
Miamisburg, OH-based data warehousing company since 1996. “I’ve raised the
issue [of green computing] because, for
me, it’s both a business question and
an ethical question,” Wang says. “Look
at the basic fact, the one that has to be
addressed: Power consumption at the
server level has increased along with
performance increase, and business
needs have grown even faster.”
More attention must be devoted to
data centers’ ever-increasing power
density and heat removal, Wang says.
“In the past, the sole focus was on IT
equipment processing power and associated equipment spending. The infrastructure—power, cooling, data center
space—was always assumed to be available and affordable,” he says. “Now the
infrastructure is becoming a limiting
factor.”
Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo are addressing the environmental concerns
about their data centers’ carbon footprint, the measure of the environmental impact of an individual or organization’s lifestyle or operation, measured
Google uses customized
evaporative cooling
to significantly reduce
its data centers’
energy consumption.
in units of carbon dioxide produced.
In recent years, Microsoft and other
companies have built data centers in
central Washington to take advantage
of the hydroelectric power produced by
two dams in the region. The Microsoft
facility, which consumes up to 27 megawatts of energy at any given time, is powered by hydroelectricity.
“This way, because we’re so close to
the source, we’re not losing any energy
and the energy we do use is pure and
clean,” says Francois Ajanta, Microsoft’s
director of environmental strategy.
Another Microsoft data center, located in Dublin, Ireland, is expected
to become operational in 2009 and,
thanks to Ireland’s moderate climate,
the 51,000-square-meter facility will be
air cooled, making it 50% more energy-efficient than other comparably sized
data centers.
Google “has committed to being
carbon-neutral for 2007 and beyond,”
says Bill Weihl, Google’s director of energy strategy. “Our carbon footprint is
calculated globally and includes our direct fuel use, purchased electricity, and
business travel—as well as estimates for
employee commuting, construction,
and server manufacturing at our facilities around the world.”
According to Google, its data centers
use half the industry’s average amount
of power. Google attributes this improved energy usage to the cooling technologies, such as ultra-efficient evaporative cooling, that the company has
customized for itself.
Yahoo’s data centers also went carbon-neutral last year, in part because of
its use of carbon offsets.
Government regulations and industry initiatives are also tackling data
centers’ energy usage. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for
instance, should have its phase-one version of Energy Star standards for servers ready by year’s end. Eventually, the
server rating will measure energy use
at peak demand, but for the purpose of
getting an Energy Star rating under way,
the EPA will first release a Tier 1 standard, which will measure the efficiency
of the server’s power supply and its energy consumption while idle.
Meanwhile, a global consortium of
computer companies, including AMD,
Dell, IBM, Sun Microsystems, and VM-ware, organized The Green Grid in
2007, with the goal of improving energy
efficiency in data centers and business
computing systems. To achieve that
goal, The Green Grid collaborates with
individual companies, government
agencies, and industry groups to provide recommendations on best practices, metrics, and technologies that will
improve data centers’ energy efficiency.
earth-friendly computers
As with any evolving idea, people will
need to think differently and more
deeply when it comes to green comput-
Data Mining
Consumers’ Invisible Profiles
Health and life insurance
companies in the U.S. are
increasingly using consumers’
prescription drug data to
determine what type of coverage,
if any, to offer applicants, the
Washington Post reports.
The insurance companies
hire health information
services companies—such as
Ingenix, which had $1.3 billion
in sales last year—to help
create consumer profiles. The
health information services
companies mine the databases
of prescription drug histories
that are kept by pharmacy
benefit managers (PBMs), which
help insurers to process drug
claims. (Ingenix even has its
own servers located in some
PBM data centers.) The health
information services companies
also access patient databases
held by clinical and pathological
laboratories.
The health information
services companies say that
consumers have authorized
the release of their records
and that their approach saves
insurance companies money
and time. Privacy advocates
note that consumers do sign
consent forms authorizing the
release of data, but they have to
if they want insurance, and that
many people are unaware of the
existence of health information
services companies.