Close
  • Latest News
  • Cybersecurity
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Mobile
  • Networking
  • Storage
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
Read Down
Sign in
Close
Welcome!Log into your account
Forgot your password?
Read Down
Password recovery
Recover your password
Close
Search
Menu
Search
  • Latest News
  • Cybersecurity
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Mobile
  • Networking
  • Storage
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
More
    Home Applications
    • Applications
    • Networking
    • PC Hardware
    • Storage
    • Virtualization

    Green Grid: No Easy Way to Go Green

    By
    Scott Ferguson
    -
    February 5, 2008
    Share
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Linkedin

      SAN FRANCISCO-There’s no one way for an enterprise to develop a green strategy and achieving a more energy efficient data center can prove difficult for IT managers without a firm plan and full company support.

      Those were the themes discussed at the opening of The Green Grid’s first Technical Forum and members’ meeting, which officially kicked off Feb. 5. The goal of The Green Grid consortium, which formed a year ago and now boasts 150 members, is advancing energy efficiency in the data center.

      While still a relatively new initiative, The Green Grid is using its first technical conference to discuss four new “deliverables” that its membership committees have developed in the last 12 months, including reports on best practices and practical steps enterprises can take to develop and plan energy efficient data centers.

      John Tucillo, a director of the nonprofit Green Grid, opened the two-day conference with a reminder to members that there is still a great deal of work to be done in spreading the message of green IT. While many companies and their IT staffs are aware of what the technology can do, it’s often hard to implement these practices in real world situations.

      There is no easy solution for developing a green data center. However, the consortium believes that by sharing information, better solutions can be developed.

      “Let us share with the industry where we are on a couple of fronts,” said Tucillo. “We want to solicit feedback from the industry, engage in the strength that is this organization and move forward. Essentially, we have to get connected to efficient IT.

      To start off the event, three members of The Green Grid spoke of recent projects to improve or consolidate data centers using green technology. Throughout their talks, all agreed that without the support of the entire company, not just the IT staff or the facilities division, it is impossible to develop a green data center.

      On the technology front, all these enterprises were turning toward virtualization-the ability to divide a physical sever into multiple virtual environments-and high-density computing in the form of blade servers, as the two main technologies in designing and building these new data centers.

      There was also a call for uniformed standards to measure energy efficient, a main goal of The Green Grid consortium.

      Green IT saves money

      Renato Crocetti, a corporate vice president at ADP, which provides payroll and human resources services for other companies, detailed his efforts in the last three years to reduce the number of data centers from 20 down to two, which meant reducing floor space from 200,000 square feet to 45,000 square feet and reducing power consumption and carbon dioxide emissions by half.

      During that time, Crocetti told the audience he had to look beyond just the servers to see how energy efficient the microprocessors his company was using were. Crocetti said he’s hoping in the future to look at more energy efficient storage equipment that uses solid state drives instead of traditional hard disk drives that need more power.

      “We needed to acquire new partners,” said Crocetti. “I dealt mostly with platform manufacturers. I dealt with Dell, IBM and Sun [Microsystems]. I never dealt with component manufactures, so I found myself turning to component manufactures and I needed them to understand that we needed to change the game.”

      While talking green is considered a corporate and socially responsible initiative, The Green Grid members also emphasized the amount of money companies can save by reducing energy bills and how that reflects on the bottom line.

      While most of The Green Grid deals with enterprises, such as ADP, which are based in North America, there is also an effort underway to expand the group’s global presence.

      For example, Tucillo said The Green Grid is expanding into Europe for the first time.

      Andrew Fanara, who works with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and has been leading the efforts for government standards for measuring energy efficiency, including a project to create Energy Star standards for servers, said his agency is also encouraging countries such as China and India to develop more energy efficient data centers.

      Since these two countries are investing heavily in their IT infrastructures today, it’s better to get both China and India focused on green IT now instead of waiting for the data centers to be built and then reconstructed later with green hardware.

      “We want China to build data centers of the future, not of the past,” Fanara said.

      Avatar
      Scott Ferguson

      MOST POPULAR ARTICLES

      Android

      Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro: Durability for Tough...

      Chris Preimesberger - December 5, 2020 0
      Have you ever dropped your phone, winced and felt the pain as it hit the sidewalk? Either the screen splintered like a windshield being...
      Read more
      Cloud

      Why Data Security Will Face Even Harsher...

      Chris Preimesberger - December 1, 2020 0
      Who would know more about details of the hacking process than an actual former career hacker? And who wants to understand all they can...
      Read more
      Cybersecurity

      How Veritas Is Shining a Light Into...

      eWEEK EDITORS - September 25, 2020 0
      Protecting data has always been one of the most important tasks in all of IT, yet as more companies become data companies at the...
      Read more
      Big Data and Analytics

      How NVIDIA A100 Station Brings Data Center...

      Zeus Kerravala - November 18, 2020 0
      There’s little debate that graphics processor unit manufacturer NVIDIA is the de facto standard when it comes to providing silicon to power machine learning...
      Read more
      Apple

      Why iPhone 12 Pro Makes Sense for...

      Wayne Rash - November 26, 2020 0
      If you’ve been watching the Apple commercials for the past three weeks, you already know what the company thinks will happen if you buy...
      Read more
      eWeek


      Contact Us | About | Sitemap

      Facebook
      Linkedin
      RSS
      Twitter
      Youtube

      Property of TechnologyAdvice.
      Terms of Service | Privacy Notice | Advertise | California - Do Not Sell My Information

      © 2021 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved

      Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.

      ×