EDITOR’S QUESTION
THERE NEEDS
TO BE PRESSURE
PLACED ON THE
DATA CENTRE
INDUSTRY TO
ALSO THINK
ABOUT HOW
TO LIMIT
ITS CARBON
FOOTPRINT.
MARK FENTON,
PRODUCT MANAGER
AT FUTURE FACILITIES
esearch has found that
R
even though there was
a huge increase in the
compute required of
data centres between
2010 and 2018, actual
energy usage didn’t rise at the same
rate. However, this doesn’t mean that the
data centre industry still doesn’t need to
develop a greener approach.
Data centres affect our day to day lives,
which is unsurprising given that we’re
a convenience-rich society. It has never
been easier for us to access clothes, food
and travel on-demand, from wherever we
are in the world.
Yet over the past decade we have started
to wake up to the impact this is having
on our environment. The on-demand ridehailing
trend is increasing pollution across
cities and ‘fast fashion’ is creating a huge
uptick in waste and carbon emissions
across the world.
Then there’s also the impact of our
beloved on-demand entertainment
services. The likes of Netflix and Spotify
require vast amounts of energy to keep
data flowing. Underpinning this are racks
on racks of computer servers housed
in energy-hungry data centres. While a
portion of these are powered and kept
cool through clean energy sources, the
industry is unable to sustain the current
levels of demand without using carbonbased
energy sources as well. So, while
consumers are trying to limit the amount
of Ubers they take to work, or how much
‘fast fashion’ they consume, there needs
to be pressure placed on the data centre
industry to also think about how to limit
its carbon footprint. Especially as The
International Telecommunication Union
(ITU) has called for the ICT industry to
reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
by 45% from 2020 to 2030.
One way to achieve this is by hitting
refresh on your ‘capacity planning’. It’s a
process every data centre leader has to
go through to make sure their facility is
as energy efficient as possible. However,
our research has found that nearly threequarters
(74%) of these organisations are
skimping on this process most, or all of
the time. Something needs to change.
Enter, the digital twin. This physics-based
simulation of the data centre identifies
existing flaws in the centre’s performance,
helping to reclaim extra capacity. This
also enables data centre managers
to become very effective in reducing
costly downtime. An independent report
commissioned by Future Facilities, found
that three times as many businesses that
have used a digital twin did not see an
outage in a 12-month period, than those
that did not have a digital twin. With its
power to save energy, money and reduce
outages, businesses should be looking to
technology such as this to help achieve
their sustainable goals.
www.intelligentdatacentres.com Issue 15
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