Distributed Energy - The Journal of Energy Efficiency & Reliability

People who know me a bit will probably raise their eyebrows at this title. If there is something I know absolutely nothing about, it's about electricity. When at a Solution Assurance (or should I say TDA) it comes to 220V or 380V, DC or AC, 16A or 32A, I'm at a total loss desperately looking around for any help I can get. It must be some kind of switch (no pun intended) in my head that's immediately turned off when it comes to electricity.

But hey, this is about Energy. And I have a slight suspicion that's not exactly the same. So, I first stumbled across this Distributed Energy Journal in 2009 when it published an article about 'The Green Machine', with the subtitle 'IBM unveils the “most technologically advanced, energy-efficient” data center ever constructed'. I think it's still an interesting read.

So I kept following the periodical and from time to time it published some articles on the building of Data Centers and Energy Efficiency when doing so. Because I know that practically all companies are interested in this matter (money, money in times of crisis) and I doubt a lot of IT people know this journal I guess it might be an interesting introduction for some of you.

The latest November-December issue has an article called 'Supersize IT' writing on how "huge data centers' surging demands are met with innovative power solutions". it gives lots of examples of new data centers and how they are trying to handle energy as efficiently as possible. Yes, I know, I'm starting to sound a bit vague here, but you know why. So all you data center specialists, just head over there and read all the good stuff. And yes, the question whether DC is a better alternative is also discussed.

There, I should go into politics. I can fill a whole page delivering a valuable message without having a clue what I'm talking about. Sort of.

Full Free Air Cooling

I've never heard about this concept before and since the Green Data Center is at the centre of many people's attention, I thought I might mention this. The news item where I picked this up is in Dutch and you find it over here. It's a cooperation of Belgacom (Belgium's largest Telecom Operator), Sun Microsystems and Cisco. The purpose is to set up a Data Center without the traditional Air Cooling installation in order to obtain large energy savings. "The concept is based on the experience of several European Telecom Operators (eg Swisscom, BT, Belgacom) using Full Free Air cooling to substantially reduce the energy consumption in the Telecom Network". This was put into practice with a small scale data center at the Sun Solution Center in Schotland. Here's a representation of how it works :





You can find more information over here : Free Air Cooling Proof of Concept. There's also a FAQ and you can login to the system where the measurement equipment and the results are accessible. Just follow the instructions.

An interesting concept I'd say. The conclusions from the participants ?

• Applying Full Free Air Cooling in the data-center is realistic !
• Compared to an industry average PUE of 2, the potential overall data-center energy saving is 47%

Life in the Data Center #3

I don't know how I missed this one earlier, but here's another Youtube movie on 'Life in the Data Center". It seems to be posted six months ago, but it has only 151 views at this moment : a tenth of the two other movies. So I guess it was added just recently and the date is wrong.

Life in the Data Center

How I came across these ?
There's another youtube movie on IBM and the green data center :



I guess there will be more to come in the next days because IBM really wants to position the mainframe as the greenest, quietest, least power consuming and coolest place in the data center.

As you see in the first movies, there's this reference to a new blog called The Raised Floor. What will be their focus ? "The Raised Floor is a group-authored blog that tracks changes in corporate data centers as they become greener, more efficient and more indispensable to business". Their first topic : The Data Center Energy Crisis.