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It is estimated that the data storage sector consumed about 61 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) in 2006 (1.5% of total U.S. consumption, or roughly equivalent to the amount consumed by 5.8 million average U.S. households). These numbers are only expected to grow.
The energy used by the nation’s servers and data centers is growing at an unsustainable rate. Not only that, but web servers are notoriously inefficient. For example, computer servers are used at only 6 percent of their capacity on average, while data center facilities operate at roughly 65% to 75% efficiency, meaning that 25% to 35% of all the energy consumed by servers is wasted (converted to heat).
If we are to even consider reducing our energy consumption and carbon footprint, the growing demands generated by our web servers must be near the top of the list of possible improvements. And the Department of Energy agrees.
If you think the virtual, online world helps reduce energy consumption in the real world (a topic we’ve touched on before here at Green Options Media), think again: a new study by management consulting firm McKinsey & Company provides scary insights into how Internet computing is devouring more and more power and spewing out more and more greenhouse gases.
Based on data from the Uptime Institute, a technology consulting company based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the McKinsey report finds that, between 2000 and 2006, the amount of energy needed to power data centers doubled, and that consumption is likely to double again by 2012. In the U.S. alone, we would need to build 10 new power plants by 2010 just to meet the growing energy needs of this country’s data centers.
By Kristin Dispenza •
January 22, 2008
After looking at data center power consumption figures for my Green Building Elements post, as well as at the US EPA’s Report to Congress calling for improvements in this area, I have noticed a host of new products coming to market that address the issue.
Changes occur so rapidly in the world of technology that new problems — and new solutions — crop up every day. One of the most glaring problems for data centers right now is that their hundreds of servers stay on at full power all of the time. The simple, low-tech solution to this problem (namely, turning the servers OFF) turns out to really not be so simple after all.
In an article for SearchDataCenter.com, writer Bridget Botelho calls server shut downs (during holidays or off-hours) “the road not taken”. Facility operators interviewed for that article cite several reasons for keeping servers going at full capacity, among them fear of lost data and simple convenience. Some facilities also claim that it is hard to establish exactly when off-hours might be — after all, who can really predict demand for internet services?
Central to this issue seems to be the fact that people are just not confident of their ability to manually manage server operations. In response, entrepreneurs are developing — you guessed it — technological solutions, which reduce the human factor in this equation.
By Kristin Dispenza •
December 18, 2007
It seems that journalism has become a pretty green profession.
Whether I am blogging or working for a more traditional media outlet, I can get almost any information I need simply by using the internet. So with a paperless home office, and no travel to speak of, just about the only ecological cost of doing business is the electricity that my computer uses… my computer, and, well, all of the servers that transport the e-mail, photos, and other data that I need.
How much electricity might that require, exactly? It turns out that our worldwide increase of internet-based data transmission relies upon a growing number of data centers, or Web server farms, as they are sometimes called. A single server farm consists of an enormous warehouse holding data storage systems and tens of thousands of smaller, state-of-the-art servers which process the information for all of our online activities. In recent years the construction of new data centers has increased dramatically, driven by the fact that most software applications will soon be delivered as online service products rather than via physical means (such as CD-ROMs). An article in Fortune magazine last year described the building boom of these server farms; a good single case study is the spate of data centers that have recently located along the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest.
It wasn’t so long ago that the biggest concern for webmasters was simply keeping their sites online and running properly. But with the double-whammy of rapidly-accelerating web hosting demands and climate change, a growing number of site operators are looking for ways to not only stay online but to stay online sustainably.
If you’ve never given much thought to the amount of energy it takes to power the Internet and all its sites and
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