Green IT
Online library Green ICT practices available
In the context of a collaboration project between the VU University Amsterdam (Software and Services Research Group) and SURFNet, the VU University Amsterdam developed an on-line library for Green ICT practices. It currently contains 258 practices elicited from both industrial practice and academic publications. As stated by the project team “In spite of the investments […]
Connect the data center directly to the power grid
Are there with a diminishing PUE still opportunities to improve the energy efficiency of data centers? The answer is yes if you take a different look at energy efficiency. At the DatacenterDynamics Amsterdam 2012 conference there was a (thought) provoking presentation of Siemens. According to the presenter of Siemens you must take the whole energy […]
Get your carbon footprint for your datacenter
Some interesting figures are made available by the International Energy Agency. In the lead-up to the UN climate negotiations in Doha, the latest information on the level and growth of CO₂ emissions, their source and geographic distribution will be essential to lay the foundation for a global agreement. To provide input to and support for the […]
GreenQloud: moving Universities and Reseach data from the Netherlands to Iceland
Last week SURFnet, the largest National Research and Education Network (NREN) in the Netherlands, announced it will transfer part of its services to GreenQloud, a green cloud computing company from Iceland. According to SURFnet one of the import features of GreenQloud is that they were willing to make specific changes; “An important feature is to […]
Data centers and power grid transformation
Data centers, know your power grid As we all know the quality and availability of the data center stands or falls with the quality and availability of the power supply to the data center. So data centers are very much depending on the quality and capacity of the power grid, for their daily operations as […]
New development: merging carbon markets
Australia and the EU agreed to link their carbon trading schemes by 2018. Businesses in Australia will be able to use EU allowances to cover up to 50 percent of Australian liabilities from July 2015. Full two-way trade will not commence until 2018. Australia’s carbon price, which began in July as a fixed 18.99 euro/ton tax, […]
European Union Carbon price and data centers
Carbon based energy can lead to considerable extra costs for a data center in the European Union. Since 2005 the carbon price in the EU has moved between the 32.85 and 5.99 euro a ton. Currently there is much uncertainty about the future of the carbon price in the EU. To enforce the right actions […]
Data centers beware of the Power Grid
As we all know the quality and availability of the data center stands or falls with the quality and availability of the power delivered by the power grid to the data center. But the current power grid is under pressure. Although suitable for the last century, the current power grid cannot handle the new demands. […]
Data centers vulnerable to climate change?
There is a vulnerable relationship between the environment, the power grid and data centers. For example last year in Texas, U.S.A, a state with data centers of several notable IT companies, including WordPress.Com, Cisco, Rackspace and Host Gator, nearly escaped rolling blackouts because of extreme weather conditions. Extreme heat led to extreme electricity demand for […]
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 […]
