Green Technology


August 09, 2007

The Green Grid Declares its Plan of Action

The Green Grid (News - Alert), a non-profit consortium of information technology companies and professionals, has a published goal to increase energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems around the world. Recently, the organization announced its technology roadmap and key deliverables for the remainder of the year.
 
Activities planned for this year include data collection using documentary evidence and metrics evaluation; data assessment through market study of current efficiency practices and technology proposals, comprising of The Green Grid’s recommendations for the future of energy efficient data centers.
 
The schedule of deliverables is as follows:
 
Data Collection
  • Data Center Standards and Metrics Inventory (Q3 2007) — In order to assess the energy efficiency, this study will cover existing standards and metrics, discover coverage gaps, and offer suggestions for future development.
  • The Green Grid Metrics: Describing Data Center Power Efficiency (Q3 2007): This study will analyze workload classification through a data center segmentation model. It will be a modified version of The Green Grid’s current study on data center efficiency metrics.
  • Operationalizing Energy Efficiency Data Collection (Q4 2007): This study will classify the need for collecting and aggregating data center’s power consumption data.
 
Data Assessment
  • Data Center Efficiency Baseline Market Study (Q3 2007): This study will focus on the current state of the industry. It will help The Green Grid identify key factors for companies to take action on data center power consumption and the challenges involved. Collection and analysis of this data will provide companies with a yardstick for comparing their own initiatives, goals, and performance.
  • Operational Best Practices (Q4 2007): These studies will analyze the need of right-sizing the data center and will outline best practices for adoption of virtualization and consolidation technologies.
  • Database for Data Center Performance (Q4 2007): The Green Grid will create its own database focusing on the characteristics and performance schema of data centers.
 
Technology Proposals
  • Initial Technology Roadmap (Q4 2007): This roadmap will assess existing and emerging technologies affecting the data center efficiency and performance, paying attention to both ROI and risk to the end user.
  • Power Distribution Options for the Data Center Study (Q3 2007): This study will identify qualitative advantages and disadvantages of data center power distribution configurations.
  • Cooling Options Study (Q4 2007): This study will evaluate qualitative advantages and disadvantages of data center cooling architectures.
 
Scheduled for release in the next two quarters, each of these deliverables is meant to bring entice industry leaders and end users from the data center ecosystem to assist in the  analysis of data center efficiency issues, as well as seeking and suggesting remedial actions to resolve these issues.
 
Lawrence Lamers, director of The Green Grid, said, “Despite the fact that power consumption is one of the most important issues facing IT today, there is a lack of guidelines and resources available for those looking to drive a change.”
 
With the deliverables it has set, The Green Grid hoped to increase the attention on the need for greater energy efficiency. The products, it says, can lay the groundwork for creating more energy efficient data centers in the future as well as for retrofitting existing ones with more energy efficient operations and design.
 
Rahul Prabhakar is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To see more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.
 
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