Stories about: Liebert

Some CIOs and data center managers have found themselves having to wring performance out of monstrously deficient facilities. Ultimately, these three wrestled with their infrastructures, made major changes and won the day.

Call it a slowdown, a downturn, or the dreaded "R" word, worries about the state of the US economy have increased across virtually all sectors save one: technology.

Thanks to a massive datacenter consolidation, hardware refresh, and creative, energy-efficient facility design, Sun has reduced power capacity demand by 75 per cent at its California datacenter alone, saving US$1.1 million per year in energy costs, while increasing its datacenter processing power more than four times. Overall, Sun estimates that its consolidation efforts will save 4,100 tons of CO2 per year and cut 1 per cent from its total carbon footprint.

Some enterprises have found ways to ensure their technology investments provide both environmental benefit and a quick return on investment.

IT company Digital Sense is developing Australia's highest density data centres with multi-million dollar infrastructure technology to support the growing demand for high-powered computing.

In this groundbreaking awards program, Computerworld US honors 12 user companies and another dozen vendors that are leading the way in green-IT. These green leaders are virtualizing, videoconferencing, turning down the cooling systems and turning off the lights. Top honors this year went to Highmark.

I've read about various types of datacenter designs and renovations over the past year and I've found it interesting to observe the diverse approaches companies take to make their facilities greener, in the broad sense of the word.

For years, Robert Wakefield and Dameon Rustin lived with the problems of keeping Snelling Staffing Services' old, poorly designed data center up and running. Not only were the intricate cable runs and varied server makes and models difficult to keep straight, but the building itself tended to compound their management headaches.

Making data centres more power-efficient is becoming a mantra of modern IT practice. Whether it is to reduce electricity costs, to get around supply limitations, or to become friendlier to the environment there are a lot of IT directors, equipment suppliers, research and analyst houses and green lobby and pressure groups all singing off this same hymn sheet.

Green computing is a hot-button issue right now, but not all the ideas out there are practical for data centers. "It's 90% hype," says Ben Stewart, senior vice president of facilities planning at Terremark Worldwide. He's dubious about solar and wind power, for example. But Stewart says 10% of the ideas are win-win: Done right, certain green initiatives can increase energy efficiency, reduce carbon emissions and yield savings.

Traditional raised floor cooling just isn't enough to cope with the high level of heat generated at the Sydney Internet Business Exchange (IBX), which provides data centre space for more than 180 companies.