Data Centers Push Back On US Efficiency Rules

alphadogg writes "Data center executives from Google and other large companies are pushing back against new efficiency requirements proposed by a prominent standards group, saying they are too 'prescriptive' and don't leave them room to innovate. 'This standard defines the energy efficiency for most types of buildings in America and is often incorporated into building codes across the country,' Urs Hoelzle, Google senior vice president for operations, wrote in a post on the Google blog. Data centers are among the fastest-growing users of energy, and setting efficiency standards for them is a welcome step, he said. But he called the requirements 'too prescriptive.' Instead of setting efficiency targets and letting engineers decide how they can best meet them, the amendments specify types of cooling systems that companies should use."

Re:What does he mean by "prescriptive"?

[shutdown -p now]

No, you're completely wrong because the analogy doesn't work. Browsers need to support specific codecs for so that video encoders know how to encode video. Videos take up lots of space and require lots of CPU cycles to encode. If I know all of my clients support H.264 then I can encode video once and have it only take up space once on my server's hard drive. I shouldn't have to create and store H.264, Ogg Theora, MPEG2, and MJPEG versions just because every different browser chose their own format to support.

While it is a valid argument for having a certain baseline codec that everyone supports, it does not preclude having an extensible codec system.

For example, Opera 10.5 uses GStreamer on all platforms, which ships with a Theora codec - but you can extend it as you see fit.

Re:Auto headlamps.

[afidel]

Uh, 400W would be severely limiting. I'm in the process of replacing almost all of my current datacenter with a VM environment and I'm using boxes that have 750W power supplies to do it, but I'm using 7 of them to replace 160 servers drawing ~300W each so my total efficiency is going WAY up. That is why we say leave the details to those of us who do this for a living and just set an efficiency target rather than prescribing specific technologies.