RackForce Blog
July 16th, 2009 [by Doug Alder]
Have a sneak peek video of the new datacenter here Check it out – more to come later
Tags: GigaCenter, RackForce, videoRelated posts
November 19th, 2008 [by Doug Alder]
ICT (Information Communications Technology) is fast becoming one of the leading causes of global warming due to the enormous amount of power consumed in the production and use of ICT devices and services. Finding ways to reduce that power usage is the key to greening your IT.
These are tough economic times and for a CIO/CTO to justify changes to the CEO he or she needs to stress the economic rewards, not the technical or green aspects, for making radical changes to the company’s ICT infrastructure. As big and important an issue, not to mention being trés cool, as going green is these days, a company’s bottom line and cash flow trump it every time
Across the industry servers utilize only between 10 and 20% of their capacity. Often the same can be said for other gear, such as storage, switches and desktops/laptops (such as do your employees have both a laptop and a desktop computer – if so why?). Making better use of this infrastructure is the first step in gaining efficiency in your ICT and by doing so reduce your TCO (Total Cost of Ownership)and increase your ROI (Return on Investment).
Often in a corporate structure the answer to putting a new piece of software into use has been to dedicate a server strictly for that program. Not only is this a waste of computing resources, it is a waste of the company’s money. That server will be drawing power and require cooling 24 hours a day, seven days a week, sitting mostly unproductive and draining money from the corporate bottom line to keep it running. (more…)
Tags: CO2, datacenter, environmentally friendly, GHG emissions, GigaCenter, Global Climate Change, green grid, Hyper-V, ICT, infrastructure virtualization, RackForce, roi, tco, Virtuozzo, VMware, white paper, ZenRelated posts
October 14th, 2008 [by Doug Alder]
Bill St. Arnaud, the Chief Research Officer and one of the leading network architects for CANARIE1 wrote an excellent article on calculating your baseline GHG emission. Bold emphasis in the article is by me.
In order to get started in carbon trading it is necessary to first establish your baseline, that is what amount of CO2 is your project/organization responsible for generating right now, and how and where is it being generated. Once you know this information you can begin planning for ways to reduce those emissions and thus earn carbon credits, and the best way to do that is to move your ICT infrastructure to a green data center. RackForce’s current K3 datacenter is very green and it’s new datacenter GigaCenter will be one of the greenest on the planet.
Tags: Bill St. Arnaud, CANARIE, carbon offset, CO2, colocation, datacenter, GHG emissions, GigaCenter, Green, ICT, RackForce, VirtualizationHere a couple of excellent web sites explaining the detail process of how to calculate baseline GHG emission data for your network, ICT equipment or cyber-infrastructure. Once you have established a baseline for your current emissions your organization can then explore how to go about reducing its GHG emissions in order to meet carbon neutrality goals either set by your organization or government and ultimately earn carbon offset dollars from various carbon trading exchanges and/or trusts.
Virtualization of networks and computing through clouds or grids using SOA, as well as purchasing green power or moving infrastructure facilities to zero carbon data will be the most likely ways that organizations can reduce their GHG emissions in order to earn carbon offset dollars. But before proceeding with expensive and time consuming baseline GHG measurements, an organization should first determine whether they are ready to move to a world of virtual networks (including virtual routers and switches), virtual servers and cloud applications. If the organization’s “server huggers” are not prepared to let go of their physical computers, routers and switches, then there is no point in proceeding with a baseline assessment.
Networks, ICT and cyber-infrastructure are about the only places in an organization where significant GHG reductions are possible. In most organizations in the service sector (education, health, government, banking, finance, telecom, etc) ICT is, by and far, the largest producer of GHG emissions. Although same savings in GHG emission can be made through video conferencing, tele-commuting, tele-work centers and adjusting building heating and cooling systems, these savings will be marginal compared to the savings that are possible through virtualization and use of green power, or relocating ICT equipment to zero carbon data centers.
The dollar savings in energy costs and potential to earn carbon offset dollars can be the several of millions of dollars per year for a small to medium size organization (50 – 500 people).
You can quickly do your own back of the envelope calculation of the potential dollars (within an order of magnitude) for your organization:
- Each computer server produces 8 tons of CO2 per year
- Each PC or laptop produces 4 tons of CO2 per year
- Each printer or photocopier produces 10 tons of CO2 per year
- Each router produces 20 tons of CO2 per year [commercial datacenter strength routers not your home D-Link style routers, those are about the same as a PC as they use about the same amount of power -DA}
- Each Ethernet switch produces 5 tons of CO2 per year
Carbon offsets are currently trading between $7- $20 per ton, but next year Europe is projected to raise the carbon price from cap and trade to $100 per ton. It is expected that cost of carbon will soon rise to $400 to $1000 per ton over the next few years.
The above numbers assume that all the electrical power used by the organization is generated from coal. However, even if your electrical power is from cleaner sources such as nuclear, gas and oil, it is expected that cap and trade will be push up cost of power from these sources at a slight discount of that power produced from coal. True renewable power such as that produced by windmills, hydro and solar systems may trade at a premium to the market, especially within large urban centers.
Guidelines for Quantifying GHG Reductions from Grid-Connected Electricity Projects
http://www.wri.org/stories/2007/09/guidelines-quantifying-ghg-reductions-grid-connected-electricity-projectsThe Purchase of
http://www.thegreenpowergroup.org/retail.cfm?loc=us
