A friend of mine who runs a very large data center told me recently that his biggest day-to-day challenge is one that is becoming commonplace in his industry: how to consume less energy. Data centers consume vast amounts of energy, and rising energy costs are cutting into both the operating efficiencies and profits of the companies that run these facilities.
Energy in data centers is primarily consumed by two things: the servers and networking devices used to store and process data, and the cooling systems used to keep them running safely. In general, more devices means more power, more cooling and more energy consumed.
The server vendors have already started to respond to the energy consumption needs of data centers by manufacturing servers, equipment racks and blades that dissipate heat extremely well and consume less energy from their power supplies, processors, memory chips and so forth. Some of the designs even utilize liquid cooling, technology reminiscent of the freon cooling in Cray-1.
