Data Centers Expected to Pollute More Than Airlines by 2020

[safan80]

http://news.slashdot.org/news/08/05/04/024251.shtml

a link to a New York Times story on a source of pollution that doesn't leave contrails: "The world's data centers are projected to surpass the airline industry as a greenhouse gas polluter by 2020, according to a new study by McKinsey & Co. ... [C]omputer servers are used at only 6 percent of their capacity on average, while data center facilities as a whole are used at 56 percent of peak performance." Data centers, though, might have more options for going green than airlines do, given present technology.

[hecktic]

not good at all...

[jimmyz]

Wonder what Al Gore has to say about this, since he invented the internet.:rolleyes: shouldn't this be part of his carbon footprint?

From the looks of it the air conditioning is a large part of the consumption, maybe they should all switch to watercooling.:shrug:

[$a1Ty]

heh, thats all dependant on unclean electricity, if we dont have green electricity by 2020 something is wrong lol

[FischOderAal]

well... what if most downloads would use bittorrent or something else? the pcs of most of my friends run 24/7 connected to the internet and when they are not surfing, downloading or playing they don't need the bandwith at all.

then we would need less data centers. but bittorrent is evil and must not be used...

[adamsleath]

green electricity
plus increased efficiency.

[gallardo]

well... what if most downloads would use bittorrent or something else? the pcs of most of my friends run 24/7 connected to the internet and when they are not surfing, downloading or playing they don't need the bandwith at all.

then we would need less data centers. but bittorrent is evil and must not be used...

You're right! Bittorrent can save the world!


They should make this their slogan or something. "Use BitTorrent! Save the world!" :p:

[Frank M]

http://news.slashdot.org/news/08/05/04/024251.shtml

face-palm.jpg

When I see sensationalistic bs like this, it always stings me that there
are people paid (well) to write such nonsense.
1.) besides demand and growth in number, they should also factor in
efficiency changes. Today, an energy efficient QC (50/65W) consumes
less energy than a SC 5 years ago; meanwhile, it also has higher
performance even clock-for-clock.
2.) the prime cost factor with datacenters is most probably cooling -
air-conditioners, etc. With more efficient processors, less cooling is
necessary, and it looks like this is the direction the industry will be
heading with the rising energy prices.
3.) datacenters run on electricity, which can (should) be much cleaner
by then; airliners run on kerosene, which won't be cleaner.

heh, thats all dependant on unclean electricity, if we dont have green electricity by 2020 something is wrong lol

Exactly.

You're right! Bittorrent can save the world!


They should make this their slogan or something. "Use BitTorrent! Save the world!" :p:

Hehehe :D
"I'm torrenting for the good of the Earth!" :D
On a more serious note, torrent works well for things in high demand and
supply, or recent stuff. But for rare, niche stuff, that will barely have
seeders most of the time, ftp still works better.

[biohead]

rofl, greenhouse gas as a pollutant. nice try, professor.

[Serra]

TBH, I'm a little surprised they haven't surpassed them already. Looking forwards, it's true that more services will be offered... but at the same time, with the gains we're making in virtualization and the constant reduction in die size (leading to lower power requirements), I would like to see where they pulled their numbers from.

Still, I could see it. Heck, some of us here require 1000w+ PSUs for a single computer and datacenters laugh at that number.


heh, thats all dependant on unclean electricity, if we dont have green electricity by 2020 something is wrong lol

Then I guess something's wrong. Power plants don't go up overnight. Nuclear power plants still take somewhere just under a decade to build, dams can take anywhere up to ~15 years... but let's be generous and just say 6 years. Alright, the earliest you can start to see this green power station is already 2014 at the earliest. BUT you don't just build a power plant... you have to raise money, select a location, do an environmental impact study (which should take a few years itself), get government approvals, design the durn thing, and hire contractors. Not counting the inevitable unplanned delays you will face. If you started *today* you *may* have your green power station by 2020.

[Note: I'm talking about power stations capable of providing enough power to be competitive with something like a coal or nuclear power plant... not things like individual windmills]

[SparkyJJO]

I happen to work in a data center, and let me tell you something about their function ;)

1. You never want to run a system at 100% capacity all the time, that leads to system failures in the long run.
2. 6% usage of a server on average, but an average isn't very helpful in this case. There are times where these servers get hammered and are running close to peak. You need the capacity to handle that when the need arises.
3. You only want around 50% total data center usage because of redundancy. If you are much over 50% you aren't running totally reduntant and if you have a system failure you could be screwed. In my case, I work at First Energy. A data center failure could lead to some serious problems with power distribution or other things.

I love it when people write articles on things they don't truely understand fully :rolleyes: