EPA Data Center Guidelines: IT Power Use Is in the Spotlight
May 17, 2007

Think EPA and what comes to mind?  Automobile emissions, nuclear waste, water pollution.  All correct, but don't stop there. Data center energy use has come under government scrutiny, and the IT industry is bracing to see what's in the new guidelines the Environmental Protection Agency will issue in July.  Its recommendations will follow six-month study of private and public sector data center energy use mandated by Congress.

No one would have guessed just a few years ago that data centers would be on the government's radar. But in an increasingly energy-conscious era, the EPA's attention was a spotlight just waiting to shine.  Current estimates are that 10- to 30 percent of IT budgets go toward paying the power bill.  And if Gartner research is correct, that figure could jump to 50 percent in a few years.

Many enterprises are already checking the power consumption of their data center equipment, and if they're not, -- and you know who you are -- they should be.  EPA regulations or not, too many companies wait for a disaster, then spring into action. While the EPA may not regulate private sector data centers immediately, taking proactive steps now makes more sense than waiting for a disaster.

Dell and other hardware vendors, as well as chip-makers including AMD and Intel are already on the case – advocating power-saving servers and chipsets, as well as more energy-efficient implementations like server consolidation and virtualization.  Earlier this year, leading technology vendors formed the Green Grid – an industry consortium of IT companies addressing the problem of data center power consumption in data centers.

Energy efficiency in the data center is about more than buying new servers—it also means running them efficiently. The point is, analyze power use in your data centers now so you don't get left in the dark.

Previous Blog Posts
11.07.07 - Scaling Out Strategically
08.28.07 - How to Cut Costs and Save the World
07.17.07 - Planting the Seeds for Datacenter Greenery
06.26.07 - Scale Out Zen — Do More with Less
06.14.07 - iSCSI...About to Go Mainstream?
05.30.07 - Is Your Data Center in a State of Quiet Desperation?
05.17.07 - EPA Data Center Guidelines: IT Power Use Is in the Spotlight
05.09.07 - Virtualized Data Needs Protection, Too
04.19.07 - Disaster Recovery on the Back Burner? Careful, It May Catch on Fire
04.10.07 - Professional Help for the Data Center
03.27.07 - Survey Shows Virtualization Taking Off
03.14.07 - Tackling Data Protection Alphabet Soup
03.07.07 - The Cost of Not Protecting Data
02.28.07 - Going Green to Conserve Energy in the Data Center
01.30.07 - Global Warming in the Data Center
12.02.06 - Open Standards Is for Systems Management Too
11.22.06 - Virtually Ready for Primetime
11.14.06 - Technology No Substitute for Communication
10.16.06 - Running a Data Center? What's Your Problem?