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Before Intel Developer Forum, Intel had a Disaster Recovery presentation with interesting information for those of your who think about DR. This presentation is not specific for data centers, but it has useful information on natural disasters.
A press release is here.
The following are a few slides.
MSNBC has an article discussing the prediction that sea levels could rise by 2-3 ft by 2100.
STOCKHOLM — The Arctic is melting faster than expected and could contribute 2-3 feet more in global sea levels by 2100 than earlier thought, experts state in a report being presented to international officials on Wednesday. The report shatters predictions made four years ago by the authoritative U.N. climate change panel.
"The observed changes in sea ice on the Arctic Ocean, in the mass of the Greenland ice sheet and Arctic ice caps and glaciers over the past 10 years are dramatic and represent an obvious departure from the long-term patterns," the international Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program says in its report.
MercuryNews has an article with a picture of a Greenpeace sponsored blimp asking Facebook to join the energy revolution.
The environmental organization Greenpeace flies a blimp over Facebook's Palo Alto, Ca. headquarters on Thursday, April 14. Greenpeace has been urging Facebook to "UnFriend Coal" and to stop using coal and nuclear to power its data centers. ( courtesy of Greenpeace )
The Greenpeace Green IT team was at Green:NET 2011 presenting its report on data centers. There was one company with their data center team in the Greenpeace presentation, but not Google, Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft, or any of the others in the Greenpeace report.
In a report released Thursday, Greenpeace, the environmental organization, takes companies like Apple (AAPL), Facebook and Twitter to task for powering their data centers with what it calls "dirty energy." Greenpeace wants tech companies to commit to clean, renewable energy sources, saying the world is running out of time as electricity demand skyrockets and the planet faces the potential for catastrophic climate change.
"We need to get off of coal as fast as we can," said Gary Cook, the report's author and head of Greenpeace's Cool IT Campaign. "Tech companies see themselves as being innovators, but when it comes to electricity they are buying it off the rack as cheaply as they can. If our campaign is successful, no one will want to be associated with coal."
Some may think the Greenpeace guys will go away, but my bets are this is the beginning.
Next week on Apr 21, 2011 is Green:Net 2011 and the folks at GigaOm have been helping to spread the news for green data centers. Here is a post on 10 ways to green the data center.
10 Ways Data Centers Are Becoming Greener
By Katie Fehrenbacher Apr. 13, 2011, 12:00am PT
Energy efficient data centers have solidly moved into the (low power) spotlight in recent weeks thanks to the Open Compute Project from Facebook. Last week the social network giant shared an unprecedented amount of data about its low power servers and data center designs that have enabled its new data center in Oregon to be remarkably energy efficient. To me, the move shows just how important these energy efficient characteristics have become for the leading Internet companies as a way to stay competitive and keep their energy costs as low as possible.
4 years when I started blogging on green data centers people thought I was silly. Now it is common and expected for data center operators to discuss their environmental impact.
I have my next idea brewing on what I think I should blog as a whole topic in data centers no one discusses now. But, for now Green Data Centers has me plenty busy.
Reuters covers the Japanese government announcing a 25% power cut for big power users in Tokyo.
UPDATE 2-Japan sets power targets to avoid summer blackouts
Fri Apr 8, 2011 8:05am EDT
* Govt plan aims to avoid blackouts when power use peaks in summer
* Seeks 25 pct cut for big power users in Tokyo, north Japan
...
The government estimates that, with a particularly hot summer like last year's, peak power production could fall short of demand by as much as 18,300 MW in the two utilities' service area -- or about one-fourth of total demand -- after a massive March 11 quake and tsunami shut down several big nuclear and thermal power stations.
Will there a mass exodus of servers from Tokyo Data Centers? Most likely not as moving data and servers is tough. But who would want to plan a mass deployment to Tokyo.
The ministry's proposal requires big manufacturers to submit power-saving plans, such as adjustments to operating hours, and would subject them to modest penalties of 1 million yen ($12,000) if they fail to reach the targets. They could also be publicly identified as not meeting government requirements.
This could be good news for Taiwan, Hong Kong, Seoul, and Shanghai data centers.
Maybe Tokyo data centers can get exemption from the power-savings, but all of this creates more risk and potential more time on back-up power systems.
