Suppose you manage a data center that uses the underfloor plenum for cooling. Then imagine that the raised floor extends to the outside walls of the building. And now picture a gigantic hole in the wall that lets two-thirds of the chilled air escape. Unthinkable? Certainly. But a new group argues that a very similar situation exists with IT equipment. The problem isn’t a literal hole in the wall, says the Green Data Project. The problem is that disk drives are as riddled as Swiss cheese with figurative holes. The group cites the claim of Sun Microsystems that only 30 percent of the average disk drive contains useful data. Of course, electricity is still going to power that unused space, which in turn is kicking out heat that needs to be dealt with. It’s not that there’s nothing in the other 70 percent of the drives. But 40 percent of the total space – another Sun number – is information that’s basically inactive and is being retained for legal or other purposes. Why keep that on a power-hungry server when other options exist that consume little or no electricity? That isn’t a question that you can answer. But it’s one you may want to ask when the next electric bill comes in – or when the subject of building a new data center to accommodate new IT gear comes up.
,