Moderator: Peter Burris
Analyst: David Floyer
For many years, the issues of environmentals were a very important consideration in the design and implementation of data centers. In the days of ECL-based mainframe computers, organizations had to carefully consider issues associated with power draw, cooling, floor space and other environmental factors, if only to keep the systems up and running. With the advent of CMOS microprocessor-based computing, much of the expertise associated with data center design, location and management, as it pertained to environmentals, dispersed. However with the emergence of blade computing as a significant source of potential benefits in large data centers, as well as the rapid rise of energy costs throughout societies everywhere, the considerations of energy and environmentals are once again starting to take at least stage left if not center stage in IT data center design and location decisions.
We note it was only a few years ago that Google identified that the cost of powering its systems was going to exceed the capital costs of those systems over their useful life. We're at the cusp of a new awareness in the relationship between energy, heat, power, system design and data center design which will play out over the next several years. But we note a couple of observations.
First, it is imperative that users revisit the metric of power per square foot. Systems that require more than 10 kilowatts per square foot should immediately be flagged as potentially problematic because most environments will not support either the draw or heat associated with such systems. Secondly, we're starting to see calls for greater distribution of application function to try and ameliorate power and heat considerations but we counsel users to note that the physical realities of very large transaction-oriented applications makes breaking those applications apart often impossible so that is not a general solution. We're also starting to see some large organizations like Google and Microsoft, place their data centers closer to large power sources precisely to take advantage of the potential cost savings and risk abatement of having to pull enormous amounts of power over the general purpose power grid.
While these trends will mature rapidly over the next few years, we recommend that user organizations name an 'Energy Czar' inside the IT function if only to ensure that the CTO role is constantly monitoring and factoring the issues surrounding energy and heat in questions of data center location, design and increasingly key issues like off-shoring and outsourcing supplier decisions, noting that in many locations around the world, heat and infrastructure are more of a challenge than in others.
Action Item: The realities of energy consumption and heat are reasserting themselves as energy costs and device power-density rapidly increase. Users must begin reestablishing centers of excellence around data center design, supplier procurement and device choices that fully factor issues of energy costs and system design, both tactically and strategically.
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