"Greening" the Data Center

Overview

A variety of factors are driving the emerging industry trend of "Greening" the data center. A "Green" data center is one that is designed to be energy efficient and minimize its impact on the environment. One problem is that many IT organizations have reached - or are approaching - the power and cooling capacity limits of their data centers. As a result, it is difficult to accommodate or expand the IT infrastructure. However, they still have to respond to continually increasing demands for business services that require more servers, more storage, and more network elements. Another concern is that energy costs are high and rising to the point where power and cooling now account for a significant portion of IT operations costs.