Steve Harris, Senior Sales Consultant of Data Centre Solutions at Novell comments: - How is Novell making a difference in this area? "Virtualisation solutions, including Novell's Platespin and Xen solutions, consolidate the workloads of individual servers to run on a single efficient server. Compute-capacity utilisation is increased by using the same hardware to run multiple applications independently so utilisation rates can rise towards 80-90% and organisations require fewer physical servers, lowering electricity and cooling requirements." - How is Novell's technology making a difference to green data centres? Are there any examples of this? "Wine and spirits company, Pernod Richard Pacific migrated existing physical servers to virtual machines on SUSE Linux Enterprise with Xen. By provisioning new virtual servers instead of buying new hardware, the company avoided buying a total of 50 servers. Instead of the projected 58kW, the company is operating all existing and new services inside the 32kW limit. Moreover, the increased utilisation of the hardware resources means that the company can accomplish more useful work within a smaller power envelope reducing operational costs and cutting the carbon footprint. It estimates that with Xen virtualisation on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, it is saving 625 tonnes of CO2 emissions equivalent to planting 2,250 trees. Electronics company, Sony Italia, replaced 12 older physical servers with just two new ones running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server with Xen virtualisation, reducing its costs and freeing up valuable space in the data centre. The company avoided having to buy, maintain, power and cool ten new machines without losing out on performance. Dutch energy company, Essent, undertook a major data centre consolidation project, virtualising a large number of servers to reduce costs and energy consumption. It believes that the Novell solution saved it about £2m for the data centre consolidation project alone." - What is the future of green data centres? "The benefit and cost offset has inhibited full utilisation of virtualisation but what businesses need to remember is moving workloads to a smaller number of servers means unused servers can be powered down and their associated costs eliminated. Virtualisation's promises of reducing sever sprawl, heating and cooling costs, and power consumption are enticing, but they cannot be attained without effective management in place. Implementing virtualisation alone is like assembling an orchestra without a conductor. You can have the best violinists, trumpet players and harpists in the world, but without an experienced conductor, chaos will ensue. For example, attempting to reduce physical server sprawl can inadvertently create virtual server sprawl which means a host of unanticipated capacity and resource allocation issues can ensure. Understanding how to manage and allocate effectively is therefore vital for optimising virtual machines. This is where automation tools come in to play. Automated management alleviates the heavy manual process of moving files and applications, helping avoid downtime and enabling effective server maintenance without risk. If a server fails there is automatic, rapid deployment of services for business continuity so organisations can plan scheduled maintenance with confidence and reduced hassle, while keeping the business running smoothly. All the while ensuring cooling and power consumption savings and reducing the impact of the data centre on the environment."

Tim Anker, Founder and Director of The Colocation Exchange, comments: “Greener data centres are quite simply good business. We visited a facility in Manchester this summer that has adopted a new and innovative cooling system based on an evaporative cooling process. As a result, they are no longer using high-powered pumps or compressors to shift chilled water in the data centre. As a result their PUE has plummeted as low as 1.1 according to their estimates, which they are having officially verified with the Green Grid. They are now among the most competitive on a price per kW basis in the whole of the UK, offering a 16Amp dual fed cabinet for as little as £800 per month, which is about 25% cheaper than comparative facilities elsewhere. It is estimated a saving of 1000Tonnes of CO2 per year is being made. “Budgets are tightening but it’s not making justifying the business case for green data centre technology any harder. We need to be more efficient which equates to lower costs which results in being more competitive. As to what has been the single most exciting development in green data centre technology? Despite all the hype it has to be the promise cloud computing will bring us. As IT managers move away from owning and maintaining their own hardware and use more cloud-based services there is scope for data centres to move away from convenient locations, e.g. in the South East and move to locations where renewable energy can be more easily accessed, i.e. hydro-power in Scandinavia or geo-thermal power in Iceland or even tidal power as proposed in Scotland. “Green data centres are the only long term future for the industry.”

How is your company making a difference? Having an efficient data centre is central to delivering both a green and cost effective IT platform; being efficient drives energy savings. When we constructed our new tier 3+ data centre we increased the budget by nearly thirty per cent, specifically, to invest in the most advanced green technologies on the market such as free cooling, active energy management and metering applications. We are now working on integrating energy monitoring right from application, through to server, down to plant; being able to directly correlate application utilisation to energy consumption. How accurate are PUE valuations? We spent an extensive amount of time designing our data centre in order to minimise the PUE value; This included a significant additional expenditure on a more advanced plant. We also did full IST testing to measure accurate PUE and have invested in full metering down to server level to measure PUE in real time. How seriously do IT managers take PUE? Are they more for the attention of the corporate social responsibility officer than the IT or data centre manager? It’s becoming more important, from both a corporate responsibility perspective, and the fact that it has a direct correlation to price also increases its significance. How is your technology making a difference? Got any case study proof of this? We are actively investing in technology to make our data centre efficient both in terms of plant but also how we closely couple the IT environment. For example, using higher density environments to minimise supporting infrastructure and less efficient interconnects. We have developed a high density environment where we have eighty blades spanning two racks and use entirely copper 10Gb interconnects. This is saving power in terms of less fibre optics, many times less energy than coax copper, minimising air mixing, and making the blades more efficient. What are the most misleading examples of green technology? Carbon offset. Also, running an inefficient IT environment on efficient servers is still not an efficient IT platform. As budgets tighten, and it gets harder to justify the business case for green data centre technology, which initiatives have fallen by the wayside? And which now stand out as sure fire returns on investment? Very few. Being efficient has, so far, rewarded us with cost savings. Do it well and IT infrastructure can be cheaper to acquire as long as you have a suitable hosting facility. Choosing the right data centre is critical. In your opinion, what is the single most exciting development in green data centre technology? And why? The shift in infrastructure architecture to focus on system efficiency rather than just focusing on the component level. What's the future of green data centres? Deep integration from application right through to IT infrastructure and underlying plant. Also, being able to understand and monitor application energy efficiency. How do you rate the performance/efficiency between all the different servers on the data centre market? Vastly different. It’s more about system architecture than blade to blade differences. Additional comments: Cooling is critical. Although it is possible to run systems at higher, and more variable temperatures, most customers still expect this to be maintained within a clear envelope. Even though we have extended the size of this envelope and upped the midpoint, the efficient removal of heat from the space is still the most energy intensive task.

How is your company making a difference? Having an efficient data centre is central to delivering both a green and cost effective IT platform; being efficient drives energy savings. When we constructed our new tier 3+ data centre we increased the budget by nearly thirty per cent, specifically, to invest in the most advanced green technologies on the market such as free cooling, active energy management and metering applications. We are now working on integrating energy monitoring right from application, through to server, down to plant; being able to directly correlate application utilisation to energy consumption. How accurate are PUE valuations? We spent an extensive amount of time designing our data centre in order to minimise the PUE value; This included a significant additional expenditure on a more advanced plant. We also did full IST testing to measure accurate PUE and have invested in full metering down to server level to measure PUE in real time. How seriously do IT managers take PUE? Are they more for the attention of the corporate social responsibility officer than the IT or data centre manager? It’s becoming more important, from both a corporate responsibility perspective, and the fact that it has a direct correlation to price also increases its significance. How is your technology making a difference? Got any case study proof of this? We are actively investing in technology to make our data centre efficient both in terms of plant but also how we closely couple the IT environment. For example, using higher density environments to minimise supporting infrastructure and less efficient interconnects. We have developed a high density environment where we have eighty blades spanning two racks and use entirely copper 10Gb interconnects. This is saving power in terms of less fibre optics, many times less energy than coax copper, minimising air mixing, and making the blades more efficient. What are the most misleading examples of green technology? Carbon offset. Also, running an inefficient IT environment on efficient servers is still not an efficient IT platform. As budgets tighten, and it gets harder to justify the business case for green data centre technology, which initiatives have fallen by the wayside? And which now stand out as sure fire returns on investment? Very few. Being efficient has, so far, rewarded us with cost savings. Do it well and IT infrastructure can be cheaper to acquire as long as you have a suitable hosting facility. Choosing the right data centre is critical. In your opinion, what is the single most exciting development in green data centre technology? And why? The shift in infrastructure architecture to focus on system efficiency rather than just focusing on the component level. What's the future of green data centres? Deep integration from application right through to IT infrastructure and underlying plant. Also, being able to understand and monitor application energy efficiency. How do you rate the performance/efficiency between all the different servers on the data centre market? Vastly different. It’s more about system architecture than blade to blade differences. Additional comments: Cooling is critical. Although it is possible to run systems at higher, and more variable temperatures, most customers still expect this to be maintained within a clear envelope. Even though we have extended the size of this envelope and upped the midpoint, the efficient removal of heat from the space is still the most energy intensive task.

Micro Grids, Feed in Tariffs and Datacentres - AEG Power Solutions are using “Combination Architecture™” to develop a flexible power infrastructure for greater energy autonomy and reduced carbon footprint. Corporate business is already convinced of its dependence on IT and convinced that the best place for its servers is where they can be provisioned with adequate power, cooling and bandwidth to ensure availability i.e. a datacentre. In a sense, the advent of Cloud solutions leans on the idea of wholesale acceptance that datacentre computing is the best (reliable, available) way forward Vendors require infrastructure to support efficient cooling techniques and buy new servers to handle virtualization and uninterrupted power supply - all of which require sizeable investments. Currently, not many companies are capable of investing due to cost constraints. Companies have reported operating expenditure to be close to 100 percent of the CAPEX. Due to the high CAPEX, small and medium enterprises shy away from greener datacenters, as they do not have sufficient resources to raise the capital needed to enhance their infrastructure. “It is estimated that IT infrastructure alone contributes about 5-10 percent of the total energy utilized for running a company,” says Frost & Sullivan. Economic downturn has therefore driven datacentre owners to investigate technologies and solutions to enhance the energy efficiency of their facilities. Companies running datacentres are also keen on implementing green technologies – which may not have been a high priority if not for the economic slump In the current markets the power consumption management of a datacentre is a high priority. There is a constant drive to improve the PUE of datacentres and reduce the KWH consumed by the facility. Peak charges can have a significant impact on the OPX of COLO datacentres and is constantly monitored. Renewable energies are on the agenda of datacentre operators BUT how do they implement this cost-effectively with 100% availability at the lowest cost of energy KWH ? Green technologies offer three main advantages. Reduced energy consumption in datacentres leads to both cost and environmental benefits. The dissipation of less heat compared to typical datacentre hardware results in minimal cooling requirements. Virtualization aids in significantly reducing the number of servers required for IT operations, thereby saving considerable space (and power and infrastructure if you want to stretch the point) The IT industry should focus on energy management software and develop innovative platforms to increase the power efficiency of datacenters. Industry leaders and standard bodies should promote the development of cost-effective cooling techniques. Researchers and industry participants need to look at alternatives to reduce heat emissions Combination Architecture™ from AEG power Solutions is the integration of renewable and alternative energy sources into power systems to compensate for efficiency losses and/ or reduce carbon footprint. The datacentre sector is already receptive to modular concepts (meets scalability requirements) and pay-as-you-go concepts which reduce up-front Capex costs. The nature of IT load is transformed as a datacentre matures through its engineering lifecycle and many facilities are designed to provide infrastructure for an unknowable future The three steps to Micro GridSuperCapApplications begin with the Combination Architecture™ ecosystem. Offering a GridEnergy high efficiency UPS deploying SuperCap applications for efficient back-up power and reduced carbon footprint with double conversion and line conditioning and a high efficiency, transformerless design with input power factor of 1. Modular design in 250kVA ratings incorporating cooling and offering SuperCaps, solar suites and bidirectional rectifier to interface with Micro Grid. SuperCaps offer long lifetime -1,000,000 cycles/15 yrs with high power density, high reliability and high power. Are maintenance free, offer a wide operating temperature range, an environment-friendly solution with reduced carbon footprint and reduced cost of ownership Step two is GridEnergy Generation & Storage. Combination Architecture™ combines renewable, solar PV off-grid/on-grid, solar roof, up to 100 MHh energy storage system, gridPV 250 Solar Inverter with 99.99% Maximum Power Point (MPP) efficiency grade, EN 50530 and ENEL compliant with up to 1000V DC voltage capability and low initial cost Step three is GridEnergy Management, comprised of a micro grid with smart power management, supply management, demand management and asset management. Combination Architecture from AEG Power Solutions offers a total solution for the integration of renewable and alternative energy sources into power systems to compensate for efficiency losses and/ or reduce carbon footprint.

Eric Boonstra, MD of EvoSwitch. "EvoSwitch is amongst the first next generation datacenters that operate in a carbon neutral way by applying very efficient and proven ways to keep IT equipment running at optimal operating temperatures. Ongoing innovation is enabling us to further improve on the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), lowering it from 1.5 to 1.2. This is not trivial, because it is 50-80% more efficient than traditional datacenters. Better energy efficiency translates into significantly reduced carbon dioxide emissions and in a lower energy bill for our customers. Our OPEX is lower than in a legacy datacenter therefore we can offer better pricing too." How is your company making a difference? "Green or “eco” is often used in marketing talk. Green is fashionable. We are however convinced that we go far above and beyond marketing talk that ‘green is better’ and therefore must also come at a ‘premium’. Our engineering approach is allowing us to be a cost leader. Better efficiency simply means that we save significant amounts of power relative to conventional datacenters. For customers this translates into much lower bills – a very clear benefit. In addition to that we show customers on their monthly bill per rack how much power they use; each separate rack is specified on the bill. We feel that Green is above all the smarter to go about things because it offers a genuine competitive advantage and we help our customers to seize that advantage. And we don’t stop there: the electricity we purchase is generated from biomass and wind-energy; these are sustainable and renewable sources of energy. In the few aspects of our operation where we still emit CO2 – like the monthly testing of diesel generators – EvoSwitch will compensate for carbon emissions by working together with the Climate Neutral group. Explain your rationale for the following? And how do you rank them in order of importance? Air conditioning Ventilation IT Equipment Heating Lighting clarification • Most significant efficiency gains in a datacenter come by looking at the methods of cooling that are applied. Compressors & the air conditioning together are responsible for the biggest chunks of the total energy consumption in a DC. • Ventilation comes very close in a second place: separating hot and cold air streams by means of ‘cold corridors’, or ‘hot alleys’, allow for better and more efficient cooling in the datacenter itself (This idea has become fairly mainstream over the past years, but was a novelty when EvoSwitch was established and built around this concept). • A good third ranking is for the IT power that is consumed by the IT infrastructure of our customers. We can only advise our customers about better or more efficient servers; in practice we show them and specify on their monthly bills how much power their individual racks are using. We can even set them up with equipment that allows for detailed power management for individual servers in a rack. We provide detailed reporting on power usage as an extra tool to help our customers to think about applying more efficient IT equipment. • Servers in EvoSwitch do generate some heat, but technically it isn’t enough at this stage to heat office. (Note: there are plans to use fuel cells for power generation in part of the datecentre in the future; these run on natural gas and generate electricity and produce hot water at a temperature of 180C – this would be very interesting to re-use). • Lighting: throughout our facilities, including the office space, we use high frequency lighting connected with motion detectors. Lights will switch off when not needed. How accurate are PUE valuations? "We use the Green Grid framework to establish Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and Datacenter Efficiency (DCiE). View also this Greed Grid whitepaper: http://doe.thegreengrid.org/files/temp/574174B8-B611-1C17-0C39433C507D47D3/White%20Paper%206%20-%20Efficiency%20Metrics%20PUE%20and%20DCiE.pdf We are very accurate in measuring IT power, also because we specify that per rack for our customers (and our business model is to charge for actual power consumption). We also know our exact power consumption at the facility; hence we are able to measure very accurately. But there is more to the story of PUE/ Demystifying PUE and being brutally honest we like to emphasize that an actual PUE figure in a facility that uses adiabatic or free cooling methods will often fluctuate somewhat over the seasons. When more cooling is needed, because of higher outside temperatures the PUE will be lower, and vice versa. The PUE will also improve when free cooling methods become more effective (a hot and dry day is good for adiabatic cooling methods). When you read about “the” PUE of a facility it likely is an ‘average value’." How seriously do IT managers take PUE? Are they more for the attention of the corporate social responsibilty officer than the IT or data centre manager? "It obviously depends on the IT manager and the types of company we do business with. There is a noticeable difference between various market segments. Companies may be extremely price sensitive and hence also sensitive to the cost advantages they can achieve by also focusing on green hosting; or they can be extremely focused on reliability, safety and connectivity – willing to pay an absolute premium for that - while being only remotely concerned about the PUE. Corporate social responsibility often is a factor for bigger multinational corporates, but it seems to be also more relevant on the European continent than in the US or the UK market. In the latter two, customers are much more focused on the “what’s in it for me”. Fortunately, ‘green’ provides cost benefits and is therefore recognized in most markets as the smarter choice." How is your technology making a difference? "We save energy and this saves our customers money; a competitive advantage is the result. We also feel it is important to be aware of our energy consumption as a datacenter; datacenter and the IT industry are significant polluters. We strive to minimize our impact as much as possible and lead the way in terms of innovation, good DC quality and attractive pricing." What are the most misleading examples of green technology? "In the datacenter world one example is providing a ‘static’ or average PUE as mentioned above. Actual PUE will also be influenced by external factors, like the climate zone in which a DC is active. When a PUE number is listed it will most of the time be an average." As budgets tighten, and it gets harder to justify the business case for green data centre technology, which initiatives have fallen by the wayside? And which now stand out as sure fire returns on investment? "For some investments it is harder to make a good business case. Recovering heat from IT equipment literally requires plumbing; if the associated cost can’t be recovered within a reasonable period, then it is not going to happen. If the business case for a greener DC makes sense, because of significant cost savings which provide a competitive advantage, then it may not be harder but even easier to build a green facility. Currently most green field operations are built much greener than the facilities that were built 5 years ago." In your opinion, what is the single most exciting development in green data centre technology? And why? "Scalable modular datacenter units with a high efficiency (i.e. a low PUE of 1.2, or better) will become common. Large upfront investments for modular datacenter units are limited when compared to the building of a full-fledged DC facility." What's the future of green data centres? "Because green datacenters run more efficient, they have a clear competitive advantage over traditional datacenters. Legal/Government requirements will force datacenters to go green. Hardly any conventional datacenters with PUEs above 2.0 or worse will be built in the future and we will see a more outspoken focus on further improving the Datacenter efficiency."