We wrap up our reader predictions on 2012 with a look at data center energy efficiency, and some of the strategies that we may see more of during the new year. In the data center business, energy efficiency is a business imperative. Soaring power usage has intensified the focus on the IT power bill and how it can be managed. Data center efficiency has become a C-suite concern. Check out Data Center Energy Efficiency Trends for 2012. For a larger look at steps you can take to make your facility more efficient, see our Data Center Energy Efficiency Guide.

Is Facebook’s announcement an isolated incident in which a company alters its policies in response to outside pressure? Or is it a sign that renewable energy will become a larger factor on site location decisions, boosting regions with “green” power in their utility mix?

We put the question to our readers: Is the availability of renewable energy a major factor in your site location decision? Take our poll:

Facebook has built a large solar array next to its new data center in Prineville, Oregon.

After two years of energetic sparring, Greenpeace and Facebook today announced a truce, with Facebook agreeing to prioritize the use of renewable energy for its data centers, and Greenpeace suspending a social media campaign that targeted the social network. The two organizations also said they will collaborate on the promotion of green energy sources and encourage major utilities to develop renewable energy generation.

As part of the agreement, Facebook said it will seek to power its new data centers using clean and renewable energy. The company has already taken a major step in this direction in its latest data center project in Sweden, which will be powered primarily by renewable energy,

That’s a shift from the social network’s first two company-built data centers in Oregon and North Carolina, which each relied upon utility power that originated primarily from coal. Facebook’s power sourcing had been highlighted by Greenpeace in a lengthy social media and PR campaign urging Facebook to “Unfriend Dirty Coal.” As a result of Facebook’s announcement, the Greenpeace campaign will end today.

Preference for Renewables in Site Selection

“Facebook looks forward to a day when our primary energy sources are clean and renewable, and we are working with Greenpeace and others to help bring that day closer,” said Marcy Scott Lynn of Facebook’s sustainability program. “As an important step, our datacenter siting policy now states a preference for access to clean and renewable energy.”

Facebook also said it will use the Open Compute Project to develop energy efficient solutions for the data center industry, and encourage other IT companies to power their operations with clean, renewable energy. Facebook also plans to engage in dialogue with utility providers about the sources of energy that power their data centres.

“Facebook’s commitment to renewable energy raises the bar for other IT and cloud computing (8) companies such as Apple, IBM, Microsoft, and Twitter,” said Casey Harrell, Senior IT Analyst for Greenpeace International. ”The Facebook campaign proved that people all over the world want their social networks powered by renewable energy, and not by coal. Greenpeace will continue to measure, report and campaign on the sector’s progress to green the cloud.”

Earlier this year Facebook installed a large array of solar panels at its new data center in Prineville, Oregon, which made it one of only a handful of data centers in the world to install on-site solar power generation. Greenpeace critiqued Facebook’s decision to build its new data center in Prineville, where the local utility uses coal to generate the majority of its power.

The environmental group mounted petition drives and protests using its own Facebook page, letters to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and even animated cartoons demanding that Facebook rethink its data center site location decisions. The dispute generated widespread news coverage and prompted 600,000 Facebook users to call on the company to “unfriend dirty coal.”

Here’s a look back at the history of the feud and some of the key skirmishes:

• Greenpeace: Facebook’s Solar Use “Encouraging”
• With NC Site, Facebook Rebuffs Greenpeace
• Who’s Right: Greenpeace or Facebook?
• Greenpeace vs. Facebook, Continued
• Facebook Responds to Greenpeace Letter
• Greenpeace, Facebook and the Media Megaphone
• Greenpeace’s Hosting Not ‘Truly Green’
• Facebook’s Response to Greenpeace

The premise behind this expert opinion and footnoted research is to outline a software-based approach to the data gathering, trending, and analysis that are necessary to apply successful energy efficiency measures in data center environments. The rational flow outlined is

• Planning strategic energy management
• Creating an energy model
• Implementing hardware measurement
• Utilizing software monitoring

Following these planning and monitoring recommendations outlined in this whitepaper will allow the data center professional to not only optimize on what is currently deployed but factor in future technologies as well. Click here to download this white paper.

NTT America said the Vigilent system was chosen based on its operational benefits, which include uptime protection through load balancing of cooling resources, improved thermal stability and a reduction in the number of hot and cold spots throughout the data center.  It is able to deliver automated control of complex cooling environments utilizing artificial intelligence technology. The Vigilent system employs a wireless mesh network or sensors which provide real-time feedback from thousands of data points throughout the data center to an artificial intelligence engine.  The engine incorporates this data, along with thousands of other variables, to dynamically adjust air cooling.

“We recognize the importance of reducing the amount of energy required to cool the data centers NTT America operates,” said Kazuhiro Gomi, president and CEO of NTT America. ”Equally important is our enterprise customers’ interest in, and support of, energy efficiency both from the environmental and cost reduction avenues.  As a key driver for the future of the data center, NTT America will continue to evaluate, support and deploy technologies that can be environmentally sound and cost effective for our customers.”

For more information, see NTT America Employs Vigilent Systems to Cut Energy Costs

The interior of new Facebook data center in Prineville, Oregon.

Leading data center operators continue to report gaining certifications under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system for green buildings. On Thursday Facebook reported that it had gained LEED Gold status for its new data center in Prineville, Oregon and Yahoo said it had earned Silver LEED status for its facility in La Vista, Nebraska.

Facebook said it was “proud to have pioneered several new technologies in the design and operation here, including new energy-efficient server designs and a low-energy evaporative cooling system that makes use of the low-humidity climate of Central Oregon’s high-desert setting to eliminate traditional air conditioners.

The Prineville data center uses 38 percent less energy to do the same work as Facebook’s existing leased facilities. In addition to its energy efficiencies, 27 percent of building materials used came from recycled products, and 30 percent of materials used were locally sourced and manufactured. Ninety-one percent of the wood used was FSC-certified from sustainability-managed forests, and 83 percent of construction waste was recycled or reused, preventing 530 tons of waste from ending up in a landfill.

At the completed facility, 100 percent of rainwater is captured and reused for all irrigation and toilet-flushing needs, a savings of 272,000 gallons of municipally treated water per year. A solar energy installation generates an estimated 204,000 kilowatt hours per year, providing electricity to the office areas. The offices are even heated through reuse of heat created by the servers.

Yahoo said the certification for its La Vista Data Center, located near Omaha, Nebraska was “a testament to the company’s history of innovation around energy-efficiency, and commitment to using less of the planet’s natural resources.”

Yahoo used an existing building to construct the data center, reusing over 75 percent of the original structure to reduce the environmental impacts associated with erecting a new structure. The company preserved over 50 percent of the site as an open space habitat to grow drought-tolerant native grasses to cut back on irrigation.

The company slashed reduced energy consumption at the data center by 20 percent with a patented cooling design. Recycled content comprised 41 percent of all materials on the project, which also recycled 95 percent of all waste from the construction process.

Green House Data to build second Wyoming data center. Cheyenne, Wyoming-based Green House Data announced plans to build a second data center in the state – expanding its footprint by 25,000 square feet to meet the growing customer demand for energy efficient IT infrastructure. The second facility will be a Tier 3 facility utilizing 100 percent renewable energy power, boosting total capacity to 4.5 megawatts between the two facilities. The company was profiled last year as using electricity provided by Cheyenne, Light, Fuel and Power, which has partnered on a 30-megawatt wind generation site in Cheyenne. “Wyoming offers many benefits to support high tech companies like ours,” said Shawn Mills, President of Green House Data. “The State and local economic development agencies have provided immense support to encourage our business to expand in Wyoming.” Set to be complete in the first quarter of 2013 the plan calls for a total of 50,000 square feet when at full capacity.

Interxion to build sixth facility in Amsterdam.  Interxion (INXN) announced that it will build its sixth data center (AMS6) in its Amsterdam campus area. Scheduled to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2012 the 4,000 square meter (43,000 square feet) data center will have 10 megawatts of customer available power. “We are seeing significant demand in Amsterdam for carrier neutral colocation space, particularly among cloud service providers and digital media providers,” said David Ruberg, Interxion’s Chief Executive Officer. “By continuing to expand in this key market, we are demonstrating our commitment to support our customers’ current and future growth plans.” The design calls for innovative features such as aquifer thermal energy storage infrastructure and a highly efficient power topology to minimize the data centre’s carbon footprint.

Nirvanix selected by USC.  Nirvanix announced that the University of Southern California (USC) will deploy over 8 petabytes of unstructured data on a Nirvanix Private Cloud Storage solution. The fully-managed solution from Nirvanix will include digital content from multiple USC entities, including the USC Shoah Foundation Institute in the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and the USC Digital Repository, a division of the USC Libraries. “In the current economic environment, the combination of hypergrowth in digital content and the need for greater return on investment at all academic institutions is driving the need for a new generation of IT solutions,” said Sam Gustman, CTO for the USC Shoah Foundation Institute and Associate Dean of the USC Libraries. “We shifted to the cloud because it provides USC with a geographically diverse and cost-effective way of storing, preserving and distributing our content on a truly global scale.”

IO selected by Binary Pulse.  IO announced today that it has been awarded a contract with Binary Pulse, a leader in private cloud and IT solutions for professional services practices. Within the IO Phoenix data center Binary Pulse will use IO’s Data Center as a Service solution, delivered through its modular data center technology platform IO Anywhwere. Binary Pulse will utilize IO’s state-of-the art environment to ensure its professional IT services, private cloud solutions, and physical and virtual hosting services are always available 24x7xForever. ”Companies with IT infrastructures in a traditional data center are missing an opportunity to create efficiencies that reduce capital and operational costs,” stated Brant Roberts, CEO of Binary Pulse. “IO’s modular data center platform allows us to only buy what we require to eliminate over provisioning and significantly reduce total cost of ownership.”

Facebook's Frank Frankovsky announces the formation of a non-profit foundation to oversee the Open Compute Project, which focuses on developing open source hardware designs. Photo by Colleen Miller.

Is the data center industry on the verge of a revolution in which open source hardware designs transform the process of designing and building data centers?  The Open Compute Project, an initiative begun in April by Facebook, is gaining partners, momentum and structure.  Yesterday it unveiled a new foundation and board to shepherd the burgeoning movement.

While the Open Compute initiative is focused on the needs of Internet companies with huge “scale out” infrastructure, the list of marquee names at yesterday’s summit hinted at a future in which the benefits of open source hardware could expand to the enterprise market.

“What began a few short months ago as an audacious idea — what if hardware were open? — is now a fully formed industry initiative, with a clear vision, a strong base to build from and significant momentum,” said Frank Frankovsky, Director of Hardware Design and Supply Chain at Facebook. “We are officially on our way.”

“This is a momentous time in our history,” said Andy Bechtolsheim, a board member of the new Open Compute Foundation. This is the future of efficiency and large-scale design in the data center.”

The Open Compute Project was launched in April to publish data center designs developed by Facebook for its Prineville, Oregon data center, as well as the company’s custom designs for servers, power supplies and UPS units. Facebook’s decision to open source its designs prompted expectations that the move could democratize data center infrastructure, making  cutting-edge designs available to companies that can’t afford their own design team.

If the project doesn’t succeed, it won’t be for lack of support. Yesterday’s second Open Compute Summit in New York featured appearances from executives for some of the sector’s leading names – Intel, Dell,  Amazon, Facebook, Red Hat and Goldman Sachs. The audience was filled with data center thought leaders from Google, Microsoft, Rackspace and many other companies with large data center operations.

That turnout is not an isolated event, but reflects a growing focus on collaborative projects to reduce cost, timelines and inefficiency in data center construction and operation. The Open Compute project is just one of a handful of initiatives to bring standards and  repeatable designs to IT infrastructure. These include the Open Data Center Alliance, Open Networking Foundation, Open Source Routing Forum and OpenStack Foundation to develop a cloud computing platform. What’s driving all this openness?

“Some of the ‘rules’ that drive our industry are wrong, and sharing data will help change that,” said James Hamilton, a Distinguished Engineer at Amazon Web Services, who noted shifts in industry practice on data center temperature and humidity.

“Progress happens when people get frustrated with something,” said Bechtolsheim, founder of Sun Microsystems and now Arista Networks, a fast-growing player in the networking industry. “This is the first time we have a true standard where companies don’t have to reinvent (their data center technology). This principle could be expanded. In this new world, we believe the effect will be very similar to the impact of open source software.”

One of the critiques of the Open Compute designs is that they are optimized for companies running huge, homogenous Internet infrastructures and are not appropriate for many enterprise data centers.  Frankovsky says this is an important focus.

“Scale computing has specific needs,” he said. “Focusing on this space and its efficiency is one of our key points. By binding together as a community, our voice will be better heard on scale computing.”

There are signs that the Open Compute designs could become more practical for a broader array of data center customers in the future. One of the new participants in the project is Digital Realty Trust, the world’s largest operator of third-party data center space.  Frankovsky said Digital Realty is interested in developing approaches to adapting some of its build-to-suit designs for companies adopting Open Compute designs.

Missing from the dais were companies specializing in power, cooling and mechanical design – areas where Open Compute designs are being shared. “There is absolutely a role for the power and cooling vendors,” said Frankovsky. “I think that would probably be the next wave of contributions you would see.”

Will open hardware change the way data centers are designed and built? “We’re at a crossroads,” said Jimmy Pike, Chief Architect at Dell Data Center Solutions. “We’re at a time when we can work together and share knowledge to help things happen quickly.”

Digital Realty (DLR) said Tuesday that it had received LEED Gold certification for 43915 Devin Shafron Drive in Ashburn, Virginia; LEED Silver certification for 43830 Devin Shafron Drive in Ashburn, Virginia; and LEED Silver Certification for 375 Riverside Drive, Suite 135 inAtlanta, Georgia.

The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System is a third party certification program and the nationally accepted standard for high performance green building construction and operation.  LEED recognizes five key areas of environmental health to promote a whole-building approach to sustainability: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality.

“Energy efficiency and sustainability are very important to our customers, which is why we have made it a core element of our approach to designing, building and operating data center facilities,” said Jim Smith, CTO of Digital Realty. “The USGBC’s LEED certification program is the most widely recognized and respected standard for sustainability in buildings of all kinds. We believe that it is an excellent standard for ensuring that our data center facilities support our customers’ green strategies while helping to lower their total cost of occupancy.”

For the full press release, visit the Digital Realty Trust web site.

A screen shot from the new version of Schneider Electric's StruxureWare data center operations management software.

Is data center infrastructure management (DCIM) beginning to mean too many different things to different people? Just as DCIM is emerging as a hot buzzword in the data center sector, some worry that the term is suffering from “definition creep” in which it is being expanded to describe a variety of products.

“There are people talking about CFD and monitoring company software as if it is true DCIM,” said Kevin Brown, Vice President of IT Business for Schneider Electric. “We’ve got to get a definition that makes sense. We’ve got to get people thinking of the level of capabilities they need.”

That’s reflected in this week’s roll out of StruxureWare, the new brand for Schneider Electric’s suite of management software for data centers and buildings. As part of that announcement, Schneider introduced StruxureWare Operations 7.0, an enterprise software platform for the data center. Schneider segments its offerings into tools for both DCIM and data center facilities management (DCFM), which includes power, cooling and security.

A DCIM “Conversation Starter”

Brown says he believes this is the right approach. “We put a stake in the ground,” he said at a recent Schneider media event in Chicago. “Not everyone may agree (with Schneider’s definitions). We are trying to generate a conversation here.”

Schneider is also playing to its strengths in seeking to emphasize the breadth of its offerings. StruxureWare integrates Schneider’s power monitoring (ION Enterprise) and cooling automation (Andover Continuum / TAC Vista). With the variety equipment in the modern data center environment, there’s no getting around the fact that management software must be able to talk to tools from an array of vendors to assemble data to manage server and data center operations.

“The real play is getting different kinds of monitoring systems working together in an effective way,” said Brown. “This idea that you can have a single interface, I think, is kind of an outdated thought process. We’re going to make these systems work together better than anyone else. It’s the key.”

Two New Modules

StruxureWare Operations 7.0 also two new modules. StruxureWare Operations: Insight is a report designer which allows for customization of reports to match business needs with data integrated from third-party databases or web services. The Insight module consists of a wide array of plug-in templates and scripting options allowing for customization specific to a customer’s data center. The second module, StruxureWare Operations: VIZOR, provides key data center capacity parameters and utilization for power, cooling, space and network directly to Apple iPhone, iPad or Android-based smart phones.

New features of StruxureWare Operations 7.0 include the avility to “drill down” into any data center location globally and get detailed real-time capacity and alarm summaries for any specific location within the data center. Additionally, an instant 3D Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) airflow view of any data center design enables users to quickly identify thermal issues.

“Schneider Electric recognizes the significant challenges our customers are facing while managing their constantly changing data center environments,” said Soeren Brogaard Jensen, Vice President, Enterprise Software, Schneider Electric. “With the release of StruxureWare Operations 7.0, we are addressing these challenges with the most comprehensive DCIM offer in today’s marketplace. Our platform ensures high availability and on-the-go control of the data center while lowering energy consumption.”

Here’s a video overview of StruxureWare operations. This video runs about 4 minutes 30 seconds: