HP Intros Dynamic Power Capping

By David Hamilton, theWHIR.com

November 3, 2008 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Hewlett-Packard’s (www.hp.com) Green Business Technology initiative is upholding its environmentally friendly reputation with additions to its Thermal Logic portfolio, which include power-capping server technologies and energy-efficiency services designed to reduce operating costs and extend the life of data centers.

According to the company’s announcement Monday, HP’s Dynamic Power Capping helps data center customers reallocate power and cooling resources by dynamically setting or “capping” the power drawn by the servers, eliminating inefficientover-provisioning traditionally needed to create a redundant power infrastructure for maximum uptime. As a result, by precisely identifying how much power is actually required to run each server and setting a limit based on that usage, companies reclaim theirover-provisioned energy to improve the capacity of their data center.

“With these new solutions from HP, customers are able to drive down data center costs by reducing energy consumption and, at the same time, minimize environmental impact,” said Peter Gross, chief executive officer of HP subsidiary EYP Mission Critical Facilities. “HP’s Green Business Technology initiative is built on decades of innovation and experience in data center design and deployment, resulting in solutions that empower CIOs to turn energy efficiency into business benefits that impact the bottom line.” (more…)

Tags: data center, energy efficiency, Gartner, hardware, HP, power capping

HP Tops Green Data Center Study

By David Hamiton, theWHIR.com

October 15, 2008 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Hewlett-Packard (www.hp.com) has been ranked at the top of the latest “Green Data Center” Vendor Matrix, an analytical tool developed by ABI Research (www.abiresearch.com) as a clear rating of vendor position in specific markets.

According to ABI Research’s announcement Wednesday, IBM (www.ibm.com) and Cisco (www.cisco.com) claimed the second and third spots respectively in the company’s new evaluation of data center equipment vendor efforts to improve energy conservation and reduce environmental impact.

ABI Research’s new evaluation method is the latest in a field that is growing in visibility and momentum as organizations like The Green Grid (www.thegreengrid.org) have been making strides in developing similar metrics and best practices for data centers. Also, LEED and Energy Star certifications have also provided guidance for data center operators on how to develop greener IT strategies. In May, data center operator Digital Realty Trust (www.digitalrealty.com) said it was the first data center firm to publish energy efficiency data about its facilities using the Power Usage Effectiveness metric. (more…)

Tags: ABI Research, Cisco, data center, Digital Realty Trust, HP, IBM, The Green Grid

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.”

  (more…)

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