HP announces New Zealand Data Center with Carbon Emissions Reporting

HP announced a new green data center in New Zealand.

HP Announces Multimillion-dollar Next-generation Data Center in Waikato, New Zealand

Data center to help organizations simplify IT and invest more in innovation

AUCKLAND, New Zealand, March 9, 2011

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HP today announced a multimillion-dollar investment to build and lease a next-generation data center to be located in the Waikato district.

Part of the data center is a carbon emissions reporting service.

the HP Carbon Emissions Management Service, an assessment service that helps organizations calculate energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions emanating from the use of IT. This will assist organizations with compliance-based carbon footprint reporting.

The data center of course supports cloud computing.

The facility will provide the infrastructure organizations need for cloud computing services, application modernization and data center transformation, enabling clients to devote more resources to innovation and increase productivity.

“New Zealand has a vibrant economy which encourages technology innovation and environmental sustainability. HP’s energy-efficient data center in New Zealand, incorporating a high standard of design and capabilities, will support digital infrastructure growth and initiatives,” said Rasika Versleijen-Pradhan, senior IT services analyst, IDC New Zealand. “The facility will assist the New Zealand IT industry and provide a local platform for the provision of new high-tech infrastructure services to the region well into the future.”

With an Eye on China, India’s spending most likely includes defense data centers

Reuters has an article on India’s increase is defense department. spending.

With an eye on China, India steps up defence spending

NEW DELHI | Mon Feb 28, 2011 5:19am EST

Feb 28 (Reuters) - India increased annual defence spending by about 11.6 percent on Monday, aiming to overhaul the military to counter the rapidly growing capabilities of giant neighbour China.

The hefty increase suggests the government plans to move ahead with some of a slew of planned defence acquisitions, analysts said, including a $10.5 billion fighter jet contract, one of the world's largest on offer.

With all that defense spending you would think there is a bunch of data centers being built to support defense operations and cyber security.  But, I am sure we will not hear anything about those data centers.

DatacenterDynamics reports on India’s Power Grid

DatacenterDynamics has an article on India’s power grid after their first event in India.

India's struggle for power

India is growing but power problems can still be a major issue for new projects as DatacenterDynamics finds out at its first event in India held this February

Published 21st February, 2011 by Nivedita Mohanty and Penny Jones

Data center demand is growing in India. Despite struggles with power provision, latency bottlenecks and site selection, the figures show India is seeking more data centers than ever before. India’s rise ties in with a larger story covering the whole of the Asia Pacific.

DatacenterDynamics ran its first event in India on February 15. Leading data center companies and end users will joined at the ITC Maratha to hear about how India’s data centers can help prepare the country to become the outsourcing hub of the world, and overcome IT infrastructure reliability challenges

If you are thinking of Green Data Centers in India, there is potential renewable energy sources.

India currently generates about 13,878MW of grid power from renewable resources, which accounts for 9% of total installed generation capacity. It also has the fifth largest installed windpower capacity in the world along with solar resources. That said, India’s renewable dream is still a long way off, with financing and government red-tape holding a number of projects back.

But, hydroelectric power is a challenge.

“Most of the sites where hydroelectricity is generated, for example, are not suitable for setting up data centers due to the lack of other infrastructural facilities such as roads, airports, connectivity and so on,” Reddy says. “The problem is that if you produce hydropower and use the public network to get it transferred to the data centers you can have a loss in transmission of about 20%.”

Power and Logistics issues to consider for a Brazil Data Center

WSJ has an article on Brazil’s problem supporting growth and issues with the power grid.

Brazil Economy Flickers as Bottlenecks Drive Up Prices

By PAULO PRADA

SÃO PAULO, Brazil—When the lights returned after an hours long blackout in northeast Brazil early this month, the problems were just beginning for the Camaçari industrial park, one of the country's biggest.

Restarting a data center after a power outage can take hours.  Consider after this power outage two chemical plants were offline for two weeks.

Two huge chemical plants, which make ingredients for surrounding industries, were halted for nearly two weeks for repairs. Collectively, the shutdown cost the companies, which employ about 8,000 people, at least $150 million, says Manoel Carnaúba, a vice president at Braskem SA, operator of the two plants. "You can't just stop and restart those things," he says. "The plants have to run steady to run well."

The are a lot of companies looking at expanding data center capacity in Brazil, but here is another point on the supply logistics being twice as long as China.

Compared with China, it takes goods twice as long to move the same distance, according to Paulo Fleury, director of the Rio de Janeiro-based Logistics and Supply Chain Institute. Despite government plans to spend more than $500 billion in the coming years on programs that include new infrastructure, he says, "these are long-term projects that won't ease any of the bottlenecks hurting us now."

What is the condition of Brazil’s infrastructure?

A week after the northeast power outage, a power failure in São Paulo, the country's industrial and financial hub, affected 2.5 million people on a busy Tuesday afternoon. Since 2005, Brazilian consumers on average suffered more than 16 hours of failures annually—well beyond the regulatory target. Brazil greatly expanded its generating capacity after a series of nationwide blackouts early last decade, but upkeep and investment since has been poor, specialists say. And while the grid was designed to accommodate predictable demand growth from factories and otherindustry, the surge lately comes from millions of new air conditioners, refrigerators, and other consumer goods.

Says Rafael Schechtman, a director at the Brazilian Infrastructure Center, in Rio: "Brazil isn't wired for this type of growth."

Google rumored to purchase Data Center site in Taiwan for $34 mil

Digitimes has a post with the rumor that Google has purchased a site for a data center in Taiwan.

Google rumored to set up regional cloud computing data center in Taiwan

Marvin Ma, Taipei; Adam Hwang, DIGITIMES [Tuesday 22 February 2011]

There is a report around the Taiwan bourse that Google will invest NT$1 billion (US$34.1 million) to acquire a 15-hectare site in a government-developed industrial park located in a coastal area of central Taiwan for establishing a regional cloud computing data center. In response, Google's PR representatives in Taiwan declined to comment.

Since this is a rumor, how about if Google set up server design team in Taiwan?  Given the number of hardware engineers Google wants to hire, they may find it is better value to hire Taiwan engineers.  Here is my post on the Google hardware positions open.