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Roundup: Earth Day in the Hosting Realm

Earth Day 2011 is this Friday, April 22 and there have been a number of data center and hosting-related events, announcements and news releases tied to the annual environmental awareness day.

Earth Day 2011 is this Friday, April 22 and there have been a number of events, announcements and news releases related to the annual environmental awareness day.

Green:Net

On April 21st GigaOm will host its third annual Green:Net conference in San Francisco. Topics planned for this year include the next-gen smart grid, connected cars, green data centers, energy storage, how the social web can drive a green economy, smart energy homes, digital energy and big ideas.  Follow the conference at Gigaom.com or hash tag GreenNet.

Microsoft efficiency in the cloud

Microsoft's news site and the MS Data Centers blog highlight data center lessons learned from Christian Belady over the years. Christian talks about metrics - CUE, WUE and PUE, and how his team's focus is now looking at the whole cloud ecosystem as an opportunity for optimization. "When I talk about the disappearing datacenter, what I really mean is that it will disappear as we know it through integration and drive unprecedented levels of efficiency gain….and this can only be done at the scale of the cloud."

Vantage celebration

Vantage Data Centers will celebrate Earth Day on April 22nd with an invitation-only showcase event.  Guests will tour their Santa Clara campus and hear speakers such as David Gottfried, founder of the U.S. Green Building Council, Mark Egan, CIO of VMware and Vantage CEO Jim Trout.

Colocation America

Colocation America will celebrate Earth Day with a week long promotion where they contribute $100 for every new colocation sign-up in Los Angeles this week to TreePeople, an organization which educates and supports communities in Los Angeles to plant and care for trees and demonstrates sustainable solutions to urban ecosystems and problems. "Being able to contribute to a great organization such as TreePeople is very important to us because they take care of the city where we have the biggest presence [Los Angeles]," said CEO Michael Trunkett.

Other Earth Day or Green-centric news this week:

  • Peer 1 Hosting has a large infographic that takes a look inside the data center statistics for top Internet properties.
  • The largest private equity investor in Vantage Data Centers - Silver Lake has recruited former Draper Fisher Jurvetson cleantech venture capitalist Raj Atluru to join its new cleantech fund, Silver Lake Kraftwerk.
  • Fuel cell maker Bloom Energy touted its expansion figures, announcing that they have quadrupled the size of its factory in Sunnyvale, California to 210,000 square feet, have grown its workforce by over 70 percent in 2010, and grown by 525 percent over the past four years.
  • After stepping up Microsoft's R&D budget this seems insignificant, but in the spirit of Earth Day the company announced that it is switching to 100 percent post-consumer recycled printing paper in all its Puget Sound facilities, including its Redmond headquarters. They anticipate the substitution will yield an annual savings of approximately 2,500 million BTUs in net energy, the equivalent of 750 million pounds of carbon dioxide, and will preserve roughly 8,000 trees each year.
  • Google invested approximately $100 million in the Shepherds Flat Wind Farm, anticipated to be the largest wind farm in the world. Shepherds Flat is currently under construction near windy Arlington, Oregon, and when completed in 2012 will produce 845 MW of energy.
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