Redefining a “green” data center
Posted by: Mark Fontecchio
Green data center
It is all well and good to talk about building green data centers here in the United States, but what is happening overseas?
Though some of the video teleconference at The Uptime Institute’s show last week was dull, there were some interesting insights into how different parts of the world run their data centers. The video conference had participants in New York, San Francisco, Italy, and South Africa, among other places. When talking about data center energy efficiency, the folks in South Africa had some interesting things to say.
Some countries in Africa have unreliable power grids. Nigeria is one nation that sticks out, and one mentioned during the conference. And so in Nigeria, many data centers are running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, on diesel generators. That’s right: diesel generators. It’s the only way they can guarantee uptime. Talk about running up your carbon footprint.
As the guy from South Africa said, “it goes totally against the green movement we’re talking about.”
But Robert Aldrich, the senior manager of the efficiency assurance program at Cisco, said it just opens up other opportunities for electricity generation. Solar power, for example, becomes a much more attractive option for Nigerian data centers.
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