Data Centres and Associated Energy Challenges

The ever increasing digitization of modern life has resulted in the increased deployment of data centre facilities. Data centres are complex ecosystems that interconnect elements of the information and communication technology (ICT), electrical and mechanical fields of engineering, and, as identified within the much cited Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) Smart 2020 report (GeSI, 2008), they represent the fastest growing contributor to the ICT sector's overall carbon footprint.

Since initial public adoption in the early 1990s, the Web has evolved to become a global platform that touches the lives of billions across the world on a daily basis. In support of business, education, news media, social participation and scientific discovery, the Web has changed humanity's opportunity and outlook for today and the future.

The growth of the Internet has been fuelled in part by the proliferation of digital technology and humanity's natural desire to communicate. We have transformed from mere consumers of information, via old-school television, radio and print media, into producers of digital content. We use, and contribute to, blogs, wikis, photo-sharing portals, social-networking sites, online auctions and much more.

Driven by the Web 2.0 revolution and a tech-savvy generation, new concepts are entering the global lexicon, such as the digital prosumer, the net generation, the citizen journalist, open-source collaboration and crowd sourcing. This social and digital media revolution, characterized by the rise of Google, YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, eBay and Amazon (to name a few), has resulted in an increasing demand for data storage and processing capacity that is showing no signs of abating.

In enterprise computing too, the outsourcing of business information technology (IT) requirements via cloud computing is motivating further impetus, resulting in the demand for larger and more efficient data centre services. Cloud-computing service provision is now, of itself, a business model, with Web-based companies marketing virtualized capacity as a 'pay-as-you-use' commodity. Cloud computing is posited as a natural progression to our digital existence, offering storage and synchronized access to our music, videos, photos and documents, from anywhere anytime, all of which is facilitated via a globally expanding fleet of data centres.

According to data centre energy consumption trends collected by the Green Grid, the overall power consumption of data centres in the United States was projected to reach 3.5% of total US power consumption in 2011. Koomey (2007) suggests that worldwide servers consume about 120 TWh of electricity, whilst GeSI (www.gesi.org/) suggests that data centres will account for approximately 18% of the ICT sector's carbon footprint by 2020. In short, the need to provide data-processing services from data centres has never been greater. But these technological, commercial and social advances are not without cost and provision needs to be made to negate the environmental impact of such rapid ICT and hence data centre growth.

As such, the impact of data centre facilities is a key concern for both companies (in achieving sustainability targets) and governments (which are placing increased scrutiny on data centre consumption and associated carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions). The 2007 'Report to Congress on Server and Data Center Energy Efficiency' (US Environmental Protection Agency, 2007) and the European Commission's 2008 'Code of Conduct on Data Centres Energy Efficiency' are testimony to that increased focus.

'Green' data centres seek to address these concerns and challenges by more effectively incorporating energy-efficient design together with high-efficiency power delivery, high-efficiency cooling and increased utilization of renewable-energy sources (RESs). Such facilities seek a balance that places environmental sustainability on an even keel with financial considerations. In fact green data centres are seen as a competitive advantage that positively contributes to the financial viability of the enterprise, and in this chapter we outline and discuss some of the key elements and concepts to consider.

Taken from :Harnessing Green IT: Principles and Practices