My former colleague Deni Connor, who also was the previous author of this newsletter, and I wrote quite a bit about power and energy concerns in data centers during my time at Network World. Read one of our more recent pieces about ongoing energy initiatives here.

The green issue isn’t going away. In fact, it’s becoming trendy.

Last week, Deni wrote an interesting article about how IT managers are redesigning their data centers to deal with power and cooling issues as systems become denser. In the article, IT executives share stories about having to revamp cooling systems and data center layouts to be more energy efficient. Some are going green from ground zero, designing new data centers to be more environmentally friendly, even if it comes at a price.

Check out Deni’s story here, which provides some key tips about making your data center more energy efficient. Some of those tips include making smart use of virtualization and using outside air to help cool hot-running hardware.

Also check out a story by my former colleague Jon Brodkin, who talks about IBM’s efforts to go green with its new data center in Boulder, Colo. In May, IBM announced Project Big Green, an effort to design more environmentally friendly data centers.

Boulder data center will benefit from the new environmentally focused services. The data center will be IBM’s largest and is part of Big Blue’s efforts to double its data center capacity by 2010 without increasing its power demands or emissions.

Are you making changes aimed at making your data center more environmentally friendly? Let me know.