Data centres powered by renewable energy
Data centres powered by renewable energy
A number of data centres are being built with 100 per cent of their energy coming from renewable sources.
Level 3 Communications confirmed that its London and Amsterdam facilities are now powered entirely by energy from wind, hydroelectric, solar and other renewable power sources, taking a significant step towards lowering the group's carbon footprint.
The group received certifications from its energy providers that the specified facilities are now receiving all of their commercial electric power from renewable energy sources.
However, data centres are still consuming a substantial amount of energy, clocking up between 1.1 and 1.5 per cent of worldwide energy consumption, according to estimates from Sanford consulting professor Jonathan Koomey. As James Heard, president of European markets for Level 3 explained: “It takes a lot of energy to ensure that information is properly stored, protected and accessible.”
High energy usage is one of the things pushing up the price of data centre use. But cloud computing and virtualisation are among the technology trends that could be helping to change this. As Professor Koomey revealed, while energy use in data centres is still growing, the rate of growth has slowed significantly over the past decade.
According to the professor's research paper, this is in part due to the increasing levels of interest in alternatives to data centres. He explained: “Cloud computing installations typically have much higher server utilisation levels and infrastructure efficiencies than do in-house data centres.”
Indeed, the cloud and virtualisation tend to require less energy due to the fact that they are capable of leveraging more space from a single server, which reduces the overall number of servers in operation. This in turn can reduce the costs associated with virtualisation and the cloud in comparison to proprietary data centres.
Businesses looking to move services into the cloud should evaluate the performance of their existing network and consider setting up a leased line or MPLS network.
