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News

• NEC data center units to use convection to cut power use by 30 percent

  NEC is working on a new type of small data center unit that uses convection to slash power usage by a third, even in Japan's hot, sticky climate.

• Colt aims to make power, cooling management in data centers more flexible

  Colt's new data-center architecture is designed to allow operators more flexibility in managing power and cooling, without having to do extensive remodelling, the company said Monday.

• Google invests in more renewable energy production capacity

  Google has paid US$94 million for a stake in four photovoltaic power generation projects around Sacramento, California, bringing its total investment in renewable energy generation this year to $880 million, it announced Tuesday.

• Facebook unfriends coal, friends Greenpeace in clean energy campaign

  Greenpeace International has ended a long-running campaign calling on Facebook to "unfriend coal" as a source of energy for its data centers, after Facebook agreed to promote clean and renewable energy, the two said Thursday.

• Facebook sets up New York engineering shop

  Facebook is expanding its operations in the Big Apple, announcing on Friday plans to open an engineering office in New York in 2012.

• Google's 'green energy czar' to leave the company this week

  Bill Weihl, Google's "green energy czar," is leaving the company this week after steering its clean energy efforts for almost six years.

• HP's first ARM server for testing only

  Hewlett-Packard is developing servers based on a low-power microprocessor design from ARM Holdings, and claims it can slash power and space requirements by as much as 90 percent for companies running certain Web-based applications, HP announced Tuesday.

• Facebook data center project takes aim at vendor lock-in

  By launching the Open Compute Project as a stand-alone foundation, Facebook is hoping to further standardize the market for data center equipment, thereby reducing costs and vendor lock-in, the new foundation's board members said at a press conference Thursday.

• Facebook-led foundation pushes for open data center tech

  Facebook and several of its high-tech partners are rethinking how companies can handle big data with low-cost computing centers.

• Facebook will cool its first European data center for free in Sweden

  Facebook has begun building a data center in Lulea, Sweden, where it will benefit from cheap electricity and year-round free air cooling, the company announced Thursday.

• Test Aims to Disprove Data Center Dogma

  Since January, David Filas, a data center engineer at Trinity Health, has been running decommissioned servers, networking gear and storage systems in a simple generator shed on the grounds of the healthcare provider's headquarters in Novi, Mich.

• While we wait for cold fusion, let's update the ECPA

  Well, <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2011/101411-backspin.html">last week's Backspin</a> on Rossi's E-Cat power generator was fun. Between that column and <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2011/10/17/hello-cheap-energy-hello-brave-new-world/">a blog posting</a> I made on the topic over at Forbes, I've had more than 100 comments and an insane number of page views which all goes to show just what a hot topic alternative energy is.

• Uptime Institute kicks off server roundup contest

  The Uptime Institute has launched its first Server Roundup Contest to encourage data center operators to retire obsolete servers and reduce their energy consumption.

• 6 steps to boost data center power and cooling efficiency

  A study released by Stanford University professor Jonathan Koomey pegs growth in energy use among US data centers at 36 per cent from 2005 to 2010 - which is slower than some had predicted but nonetheless significant.

• ITU agrees on green IT measurement standards

  The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has reached an agreement on ways to measure the impact of IT systems on the environment, in an effort to standardize the widely varying estimates now in use, the group said Wednesday.