Comments on: Big Data Centers Get All the Attention, but Small Data Centers Use More Energy http://nplusoneit.com/2010/02/15/big-data-centers-get-all-the-attention-but-small-data-centers-use-more-energy/ All about available, scalable and sustainable IT Mon, 13 Jun 2011 18:24:01 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: John Stanley http://nplusoneit.com/2010/02/15/big-data-centers-get-all-the-attention-but-small-data-centers-use-more-energy/#comment-6 Mon, 15 Feb 2010 21:32:11 +0000 http://nplusoneit.com/?p=79#comment-6 I’m not aware of very much good, publicly available data that directly estimates the number of data centers out there, especially the number of server closets and smaller facilities. The 2007 EPA Report to Congress has a breakdown of US data center kWh use by size class. One way to back out a rough number of sites might be to use these kWh totals, convert to kW, assume a W/sq ft power density, get a total sq ft estimate, and then use the EPA’s definitions of the size classes (a server closet is <200 sq ft, etc.) to get a site count. Very rough, but you could do it.

To your second point, yes, I definitely think larger facilities are more likely to invest in reducing their energy consumption. If some kind of efficiency initiative can save you X% of your power bill, then bigger sites with bigger power bills are chasing larger dollar amounts. This makes it worthwhile for them to put money into tools, equipment, services, and staff time to pursue the savings.

]]> By: Philip http://nplusoneit.com/2010/02/15/big-data-centers-get-all-the-attention-but-small-data-centers-use-more-energy/#comment-4 Mon, 15 Feb 2010 17:48:29 +0000 http://nplusoneit.com/?p=79#comment-4 Hi,
Good luck with the new blog.
You raise an interesting point here. Do you have any numbers on how many “huge” vs “enterprise-class” vs small-to-medium data centres there are out there? Globally? By country?

To make facilities more efficient, you need to have decent metering and monitoring in place so you can understand where you are starting from and continue to measure and trend how you are changing over time – real-time. Data centres of all sizes seem to be relatively poorly instrumented in this regard. Do you think the bigger ones are more likely to invest to address this than the smaller ones are?

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