Environmental considerations when choosing a data centre

For some customers, an important factor when choosing a data centre is how green their facilities are. Issues such as rising power costs, green legislation and corporate social responsibility mean that green IT is increasingly on peoples’ minds.

This blog gives a briefing of some key environmental components that makes a great data centre green.

Modular Data Centre Designs

Unlike the way a traditional data centre is constructed, a modular data centre is designed for rapid deployment, energy-efficiency and high density. The benefit of this type of design is that data centres don’t have to build to predict over capacity which increases overheads and wasted energy to provide power to, and keep cool, a lot of empty space. A modular design means that companies acquire only the computing environment they need now, with additional modules “bolted on” as and when required.

brightsolid builds and designs its data centres to deliver optimum performance levels through a resilient, scalable modular design that allows us to offer a highly flexible deployment environment.

Cutting Edge Technology

As green IT comes to the forefront of people’s minds, an increasing number of technologies are being developed to ensure that facilities become more environmentally friendly.

An example of this is Ecofris, a through wall cooling technology, which significantly reduces the need for traditional power-intensive mechanical cooling. With an indirect air to air approach, cooling is managed by strategically placing controllable fans so that cooling can take place through the wall of a data centre rather than under the floor and this method vastly reduces power consumption and in particular, Power Usage Efficiency (PUE).

brightsolid implemented this pioneering technology in our Aberdeen data centre. As a result the facility operates at PUE of 1.25, 80% more efficient than the UK data centre average.

Geography

Increasingly organisations are looking to locate or build a data centre in countries that offer a cooler climate in order to deliver the highest levels of power efficiencies. If an environment is cooler, it takes less cooling to maintain a data centre and therefore less energy is being used.

Scotland is being seen as a data centre haven thanks to its cool climate and high winds, making it ideally suited to the development of green data centres that also make use of renewable energy, energy efficient designs, and natural air cooling systems.