Opening a conversation on green Data Center issues
“Now’s your chance to meet the author of Build the Best Data Center Facility for Your Business! Come to the Data Center of Future area in the World of Solutions Expo! And be sure to pick up a free t-shirt…” I took part in a book-signing at Cisco Live on Tuesday, and during the event a woman’s voice came over the speaker system every few minutes with that announcement. She – I found out later her name is Delilah – relentlessly encouraged folks to stop by the table where I was stationed with a pen and a stack of books. A rather impressive queue formed, and I ultimately signed books, shook hands and chatted with about 75 people before regrettably turning the rest away when we ran out of both time and materials. I’m wishing Delilah was here now, to help attract an even larger virtual crowd. Network World has kindly invited me to blog this month about green Data Center issues. I did a similar guest blog two years ago about general Data Center topics and it’s nice to have the return opportunity. While I don’t have any of those free t-shirts that Delilah mentioned, I do plan to kick around approaches for optimizing Data Center resources and lowering Data Center operational costs. I would also like to talk about Data Center industry activities around green and share some (I think) interesting online resources of information. I much prefer to have this blog be an open forum with some give-and-take conversations rather than me just tossing out my opinions. If you’re reading this, you’re probably involved with your company’s Data Center in some way, so please jump in with your perspective. Along those lines, I’d like to kick things off with a question: How do you define a green Data Center? Green IT and green Data Centers are popular phrases these days, but most of the online articles and discussions I see about them don’t define the terms, which I think can vary significantly. I’ll offer my definition with my next post, but would like to hear from you first. Until then, thanks for reading…
