From The Chair -

Peace and Goodwill to All Data Centre Managers

Here’s a little known fact – worldwide data centres account for as much carbon emission as the airline industry. Sooner, rather than later, people outside our industry will realise this and the spotlight will be even more tightly focussed on what ‘we’ do with ‘all those computers’. Of course we only run those computers to provide a service to everyone else, but without doubt the IT industry will be called to account.

So spare a thought for your data centre manager in all this. They are caught in the cross-fire between the need to cut emissions (most probably seen within the company as the need to reduce energy costs which are rising rapidly) and our demands for more servers and more space and power. If and when we implement more services on blades the problems are likely to get worse. Blades may reduce space requirements but this is usually accompanied by an increase in the weight of racks – is your floor strong enough? And blades concentrate the power and the heat into a smaller area, possibly creating hot spots within your machine room that the air conditioners will struggle to cope with. They will increase their power consumption in an attempt to adapt and up goes your energy bill and carbon footprint again.

This is not to say that I am against the introduction of blades – far from it. But what it does highlight is that we are at a transition point with respect to the design for cooling in the data centre. Traditional designs with large air conditioning units on the sides of the room have been described as similar to cooling your whole kitchen just because you need a refrigerated area in one corner. Designs exist which bring the cooling much closer to the heat source, and as power densities in racks increase these may be worth considering. Making adaptations to your data centre could be a slow and laborious process, so don’t get caught out!

And with that all that remains is for me to wish you all a Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year and to thank everyone at hpUG, both staff and volunteers, for another year of sterling effort.

We hope you have enjoyed and benefited from your hpUG membership during the last year, and look forward to being in contact with you again during 2008.

And in case you haven't already guessed, the theme for this issue is Blades.

I look forward to hearing from you.

John Owen
HPUG Chairman


Take a look at our events page for the latest information on forthcoming events