Here’s a roundup of some interesting items we came across this week in our reading of data center industry blogs.
Lessons Learned from Hurricane Sandy - The Schneider Electric blog zeroes in on several ideas for storm-proofing data center infrastructure. "For data center stand-by generator systems, it’s now time to take a fresh look at the same pump technology has been widely employed in gasoline stations for more than 25 years. In these systems, the actual pump is submersed in the fuel of the tank, safely protected (not to mention cooled) by the fuel within the tank, generally impervious to the prevailing environment. Another area where I expect we’ll see greater interest is generators that can run on either diesel or natural gas or a combination of both within the same engine, or a generator plant with a mix of separate diesel and natural gas powered generators."
Greenpeace targets Amazon in clean cloud stunt - Katie Fehrenbacker reports on "greenAWS.com," a URL that was circulated at the AWS re:Invent conference this week. "If you pull back the curtain on the site a bit, the domain name is registered to a blocked private holder, and if you track back the IP address it takes you to . . . Greenpeace USA. The project appears to be an attempt by the environmental group to start a discussion around how it thinks AWS should concentrate more efforts on sourcing renewable energy for its services." Yeah, good luck with that, Greenpeace. Amazon will probably be the last bastion of the data center "Fight Club" mentality.
Holy Air Biscuits Batman! - Chris Crosby of Compass Datacenters riffs on Microsoft's methane-powered data center. "Just when you think things just can’t get any weirder, I read that Microsoft is working to develop a data center that runs on sewage. ... I say that if you’re running a data center using the byproduct of an entire state’s worth of indoor plumbing capacity you’ve probably stretched the boundaries of euphemism to the breaking point. I guess in their quest to achieve their objective of becoming carbon neutral the boys in Redmond will leave no stone unturned…or toilet seat up for that matter."
