The Green IT Perspective
By Preston Gralla

The data center of tomorrow may look very different from the one of the future — but in ways that are very green and will most likely surprise you.

When many people think of tomorrow’s data center, they imagine racks of monstrous servers, powered by enormous amounts of electricity taken straight off the grid. What they don’t envision are many tiny processors that are merely sipping energy — and sipping it from solar cells mounted on the building’s roof.

That, however, may well be the future of the data center, judging from some interesting news this week. As I write in my blog, “Will Your Next Data Center Be Solar Powered?”, i/o Data Centers, an IT infrastructure provider, is in the process of deploying a massive array of solar panels that will generate up to 4.5 megawatts of electricity to help power its giant data center. Thousands of solar panels will sit on its roof, and given that it’s located in Phoenix, there’s plenty of sunlight to go around. That means plenty of electricity. If solar energy can help power such a massive data center, it can certainly help power smaller ones as well.

Talking about small, in “Are Tiny Processors the Future of Green Data Centers?”, I point to the possibility … Read More