Data Centers Tighten Energy Belts

New green initiatives are pushing data center companies in the European Union to take the lead in developing environmentally friendly technology.

Bernard Geoghegan, head of international operations at Digital Realty Trust, or D.R.T., one of the biggest data center groups in the world, said that although the environmental reputation his company had gained in Europe was originally driven by financial considerations, customers had since become acutely aware of the importance of going green, both for ethical and financial reasons.

For D.R.T., evidence of the value of the new emphasis on environmental concerns is visible in customer demand for its recently introduced PowerVu technology. With this new tool, data center machines are fitted with an energy-measuring device, allowing their operators to view the exact power usage effectiveness of each machine in the data center at a glance. Power usage effectiveness is a gauge of how much of the electricity consumed in a data center actually goes toward operating the computers.

Read More…