Last time, I shared with you some of the rhetoric behind Microsoft’s bold moves into container data center design, which they call C-Blox, in the quest for greater energy efficiency. Now, I’d like to share some specific details of what the company has done so far and what these sustainability gains spell for the next wave of expansion of the backbone of the Internet, including data center architecture which facilitates acclimatization to hot desert environments.
Here, once again, is a quote from Steve Ballmer...
“Sustainability is an important issue, really, for all of us. I think, more and more as a social issue around the globe, this has gotten embraced. It’s a big issue at Microsoft also because if you look at non-travel power consumption in the world today, perhaps PCs (and information technology) is one of the most rapidly growing power consumers on the planet and we think that we have a real responsibility as well as some real innovation that can really help focus in on the opportunities to reduce the power consumption by the I.T. industry, to use I.T. to help people reduce their overall power consumption needs and to use I.T. as a tool for some of the core scientific research that will fundamentally change the way energy gets produced and used in the years to come.
We formed an entire group at Microsoft just dedicated to drive our products to be more and more suitable for scientific research, whether that’s in areas of energy and environment, pharmaceutical research or many, many others. There is a very long list which our team has come up with as we’ve partnered with scientists in academia, scientists in corporations, scientists in government … there is a very long list of improvements that we need to make in the modeling tools, the performances tools, etc., and at the end of the day, many of the most important advances won’t just come from all of our conservation efforts but if we really want to be more green, we need the scientific research that powers green energy.”
- Steve Ballmer, Chief Executive Officer
Microsoft Corporation
March 3, 2008
Mr. Ballmer’s words sound good. However, as environmentalists know too well, the high technology industry can be an ally of the Earth and among its worst enemies at the same time. Indeed, as of this writing, Microsoft is the target of environmental protests because of its use of toxic substances in the design and manufacture of the Xbox gaming console.
Nevertheless, there is ample room for hope because Microsoft has pioneered new achievements in energy efficiency with its C-Blox container data center design. Specifically, as Microsoft continues to deploy new data centers for its growing presence as a provider of web-based applications, it will rely more and more on C-Blox. It has announced that its new Chicago data center will be the first in the world to be comprised entirely of the C-Blox container data center design. Because of this, power consumption, which typically draws 4,500 watts per square foot of data center real estate, will be reduced by more than two-thirds, down to 1,200 watts per square foot.
In the third part of this thread, I’ll point you toward another accomplishment and what it spells for the future of container data center design.
Sustainable Justice For All!
Corbett Kroehler
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