Japan Power Grid crisis: countdown for shutdown
Hokkaido Electric Power Company has started with the shut down of reactor N0. 3 of the Tomari atomic power plant. By Sunday, the unit of 912 MW will officially come offline. Although the shut down is due for its regular maintenance checkup this is a dramatic event for Japan. It is the last of Japan’s [...]
Energy efficient Data Center ≠ Green Data Center
“Many IT companies are simply choosing to attach their modern information factories to some of the dirtiest sources of electricity, supplied by some of the dirtiest utilities on the planet” says Greenpeace. In their latest report ‘How green is your cloud?’, Greenpeace has criticized the cloud computing industry saying that cloud providers “are all rapidly expanding without [...]
Start of European Data Centre Association (EUDCA)
Although IT infrastructure delivers no direct business value, much of the business value is created in business processes that depend upon digital information processing and a solid and stable IT infrastructure. This IT infrastructure is mostly located in data centres and they are the back bone of the digital economy. Until recently there were in [...]
Power grid crisis: Japanese data centers hit again?
It looks like the feared scenario of last year, that all of Japan’s nuclear power plants would be offline within about one year, is becoming true. Currently only two of 54 reactors are still operating. Tokyo Electric’s last active reactor is set to go into maintenance on March 26, while Hokkaido Electric’s Tomari No. 3 [...]
Prepare for the Zettabyte Data Wave: right sizing and managing your data center
Lately two interesting and complementary reports from Cisco and Oracle came available with figures and trends associated cloud computing and data centers. By the end of 2015 global datacenter IP traffic will reach 4.8 zettabytes (Cisco). By the way a zettabyte is equal to 1 billion terabytes. The Oracle report reveals that many businesses appear [...]
Data Centers and Mount Sustainability
This year Ray Anderson, often called the “greenest CEO in America” has passed away. Mr. Anderson was the founder of Interface, one of the world’s largest producer of commercial carpet tiles. After 20 years, running his business in compliance with government regulations, he read in 1994 Paul Hawken’s book “The Ecology of Commerce,” which gave [...]
Data Center Ups and Downs in the Nordic
Just before the end of the year some new DC developments in the Nordic. Alchemy Plus which hoped to build a multi-million pound data centre in Shetland has gone back to the drawing board, but says it is still keen on doing business in the isles. Alchemy Plus held talks with Shetland Islands Council in [...]
Green Cloud Computing. Which way to go?
What is the right cloud architecture to create a green and sustainable cloud? Should we consolidate to huge mega data centers or is there another way to go? The analogy Currently data centers are constructed on the intersection of the electrical energy infrastructure and the network (data) infrastructure. Considering the current electrical energy infrastructure, for [...]
Impact Australian roll out carbon tax on IT
This week the Australian parliament passed the Clean Energy bill, 2011 – the effect of which will be to introduce a carbon tax starting in July of 2012 as explained in the GreenMonk blog . The tax will start at 17 euro per tonne in 2012-2013 and will increase to 24.15 euro in 2013-2014 and 25.40 euro [...]
Iceland green data center initiatives
Data center operators want to cut energy usage and energy costs. The Nordic countries, with their cool temperatures, cool water and an electricity generation that is nearly entirely from renewable sources are starting all kinds of initiatives to answer this needs. In an experimental phase we have the tidal power generation at the Orkney Islands, in [...]
