MN Hires Aperture for Green Facility

By Justin Lee, theWHIR.com

August 20, 2008 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Minnesota’s Office of Enterprise Technology (mbbnet.umn.edu/agencies/moet.html) announced on Wednesday it has contracted data center software provider Aperture (aperture.com) to manage 30,000 square feet of data center space, power and cooling and to help plan and implement energy-saving initiatives within the state’s primary shared data center.
 
The OET provides information services to Minnesota government, including developing enterprise information strategies, policies and standards.

The governmental organization also oversees IT investments and creates a secure and efficient information management environment.

As part of its ongoing efforts to be energy efficient, the OET will use Aperture VISTA Data Center Service Management to ensure that data center equipment is properly commissioned and decommissioned, and to plan, model and implement energy-saving initiatives in the data center.

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Tags: Aperture, data center, energy efficiency, government

Data Centers Big Polluters, says Study

May 6, 2008 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Data centers produce higher gas emissions than the countries of Argentina and the Netherlands and are projected to surpass the airline industry as carbon emitters by 2020, according to a new study by McKinsey & Company (mckinsey.com).

The study uses data from the Uptime Institute, a research and advisory organization for data center users, was released at the Green Enterprise Computing Symposium in Orlando, Florida and predominantly focuses on the cost and energy saving opportunities being “squandered” today in corporate and government data centers.

According to reports in the New York Times, William Forrest, the lead McKinsey consultant on the report, says that the carbon dioxide emissions attributable to the electricity consumed by fast-expanding data centers will rise fourfold by 2020 and that the greenhouse gas impact of data centers is “not yet counted and likely to be very significant.”

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Tags: cooling, data center, government, research, The Green Grid, Uptime Institute, virtualization

Web Hosting’s Green Movement

By Dennis McCafferty

There’s a shift going on in the hosting world, toward eco-friendly business - as a community of industry associations, government organizations and other would-be policy makers work to define “green” hosting

It may not be easy being green – but it could be worth the effort.

That’s the picture painted by recent activity in the hosting industry: Environmental policy advocates and government leaders are working with industry executives to explore virtualization and other practices as ways of reducing dependence on the energy-sapping equipment now fueling data centers.

In New York, one hosting company is using hybrid vehicles to transport servers, among other efforts.

And in San Antonio, Rackspace, another host, isn’t only turning to virtualization as a way to reduce consumption – it’s launching a comprehensive, company-to-customer series of green initiatives, including supporting wind turbine farms in the US.

“Why are we doing this?” says John Engates, CTO of Rackspace. “Because the environment right now is in a very dangerous state. Internet and data-center infrastructure are growing at a very fast pace, and we’re going to ruin the planet if we don’t do anything about it. As a large data-center operator, our customers expect us to take the initiative to do the right thing. But there are self-serving reasons as well. We save on energy costs and equipment costs to our customers by doing this, and that puts us in a better financial situation.”

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Tags: AMD, blade server, cooling, data center, Dell, EPA, government, HP, IBM, Intel, LimeLeap, Logicworks, Rackable Systems, Rackspace, renewable energy, solar, SprayCool, Sun Microsystems, TerraPass, The Green Grid, virtualization, VMware