[LINK] Data Centers Waste Vast Amounts of Energy, Belying Industry Image - NYTimes.com

[Marghanita da Cruz]

grove at zeta.org.au wrote:
<snip>
> I have seen and heard of some crazy and also innovative cooling schemes.
> Most DC standard racks are designed to manage airflow as well.  But none 
> of it is enough.  I think personally a lot of the waste is in the form 
> of poorly written or managed code/systems that are underutilised and 
> the waste heat/energy they put out is a side effect of having too much 
> systems power in the hands of the application developers and their reliance
> on knowing that a big beefy system will mask the deficiencies of 
> what is actually running on it.   An example of this is a $30,000 
> computer with dual 400w pwer supplies running a constant high load due to the 
> poorly built PHP/Mysql appserver running on it, used to serve 15 or so 
> clients. Multiply this by 90.   Some of these should be virtualised
> and are, but others are slow to take up the process....   Good Datacentre
> management of energy starts with the server's application.... :)
<snip>

And in a parallel universe, people are installing PV panels as an 
alternative, I guess, to diesel Generators, which replaced the iconic 
Australian Windmill and Water Tank.

Then there is the installation of Generators (more excitingly called 
Turbines), being installed to run air conditioners in Gymnasiums,
the world has gone quite Mad!!!

Marghanita
-- 
Marghanita da Cruz
Ramin Communications (Sydney)
Website: http://ramin.com.au
Phone:(+612) 0414-869202