Liam's blog
Coal fired clouds
Thu, 27/05/2010 - 22:34 — LiamSo, is cloud is really green and should you move all your IT into the cloud because it is much more efficient than running it yourself? If I am procuring IT services and one of my objectives is to manage the environmental impact of our IT then what can I do? I can’t use the CRC, I can’t use PUE and I definitely can’t rely on supplier marketing.
Why are we double glazing our servers?
Fri, 13/11/2009 - 19:48 — LiamIt is well known that one of the major contributors to data centre inefficiency is the cooling plant. Most data centres are air conditioned and this is accepted practice, with Air Conditioning bodies recommending the operating ranges but why is air conditioning necessary at all?
Metrics #1 - Either Simple or Useful
Fri, 09/10/2009 - 02:00 — LiamThe dichotomy of metrics, we want simple metrics but when we simplify them they are no longer useful for anything. If we were to try and rank car insurers from “best” to “worst” for every customer the problems would be obvious so why are we trying to do this for data centres?
Green IT #1 - Data centres are not light bulbs
Mon, 28/09/2009 - 10:14 — LiamWill green data centres increase energy use? The industry press has a never ending stream of “green” announcements from ICT vendors telling us how much energy their new product will save or how good the “Design PUE” of their new data centre is. The problem is that all this green may actually increase data centre energy use.
Data centre cost #1 - Chargeback metrics
Mon, 21/09/2009 - 19:35 — LiamWhether you are a data centre operator trying to account for your costs and allocate your newly acquired power bill to the owners of the systems filling up your data centre, a consumer of data centre services or a management accountant trying to understand where the cost should be allocated, charge back metrics are a hot topic.
Cost black holes
Sun, 06/09/2009 - 00:27 — LiamHow the corporate data centre has become a cost black hole. The corporate data centre has some serious challenges to face up to in its relationship with the business. Whilst the proportion of business spend in the data centre is rising our ability to account for that spend and demonstrate value is disappearing.
