Data Center Managers Weary of Whittling Cooling Costs 198
Nerval's Lobster writes that a survey from the Uptime Institute "suggests something it calls 'green fatigue' is setting in when it comes to making data centers greener. 'Green fatigue' is exactly as it sounds: managers are getting tired of the increasingly difficult race to chop their PUE, or Power Usage Effectiveness. The PUE is a measure of a data center's efficiency. The lower the PUE, the better — and Microsoft and Google, with nearly limitless resources, have set the bar so high (or low, depending on your perspective) that it's making less-capitalized firms frustrated. Just a few years ago, the Uptime Institute estimated that the average PUE of a data center was around 2.4, which meant for every dollar of electricity to power a data center, $1.4 dollars were spent to cool it. That dropped to 1.8 recently, an improvement to be sure. But then you have companies such as Google and Microsoft building data centers next to rivers for cheap hydroelectric power in remote parts of the Pacific Northwest and reporting insanely low PUEs (below 1.1 in some cases). The Institute latest survey of data center operators shows only 50 percent of respondents in North America said they considered energy efficiency to be very important to their companies, down from 52 percent last year and 58 percent in 2011."
why not migrate everything to the cloud? (Score:5, Funny)
that always works
Re:why not migrate everything to the cloud? (Score:5, Funny)
That cloud is where the joke that went over your head is at. ;^)
Re:Go North, Young Man (Score:4, Funny)
Yet only six hours at the speed of light*.
*Disclaimer: Speed of light in fiber optic cabling is even faster than speed of light in a vacuum, because vacuums have all the dirt swirling around in them, whereas fiber is very clean. So it says in our marketing material, anyway. So come build your data centers in Duluth, we welcome you.
Re:Don't use HVAC? (Score:5, Funny)
I like the way Facebook say they don't use HVAC... yet their entire BUILDING is a huge HVAC unit!
Amazon just hires local surfs to peddle bicycles that power belt-driven fans. When a surf drops, they simply hustle them out and replace them with another. Communities are so glad to have such a huge employer, they look the other way...
Re:Fuck those companies (Score:5, Funny)
"From this financial quarter onwards, as part of our corporate strategy of reducing paper usage, all corporate division teams will be required to provide monthly publication quality reports detailing how much paper they have purchased, used and have saved in the past month. Duplicate copies should be printed out and sent to their line managers, accounting, purchasing, IT and archives. Each team should also maintain their own local archive to provide the annual report at the end of the financial year."