Sun Goes for Efficient Data Centers

Sun Microsystems is keeping pace with the global computer related industry of upgrading and overall transforming the data centers into more energy efficient places. The company announced that three of its data centers that were recently built in Santa Clara, California; Blackwater, United Kingdom and Bangalore, India, are using last generation energy efficient computing and cooling systems.

The largest of the three data centers is the Santa Clara-based one, which measures 76,000 square feet and it was upgraded in a two-phase program. During the first phase, the data center experienced a hardware consolidation and refreshing project that is expected to increase the available computing power by 450 percent, while cutting energy costs by more than $1.1 million every year. After the completion of the three-month long consolidation program, the second phase began over a period of 12 months and it included rearranging the internal space and installing the new hardware. This second phase of the restructuring program is going to save another 30 percent in energy costs according to Sun Microsystems, cited by the news site serverbulletin.

"There are many projects, big and small, that businesses can begin today to make a difference. It doesn't have to be complicated and the ROI can be larger than you'd imagine," said Dave Douglas, Vice President of Eco Responsibility for Sun Microsystems, in company press statement. "We're opening the doors on our new global datacenters today to show what's possible in a relatively short time frame and because we believe strongly that sharing is the path to a greener world." As the data centers in the U.K. and India suffered the same kind of modifications and upgrades, the total surface of the Sun data centers was reduced from 267,000 square feet to only 133,000, meaning a drop of around 50 percent.

From the hardware point of view, the three data centers are running only systems using the Sun energy efficient products like the Sun Fire T1000/T2000 line of servers or the Sun's x64 compatible machines that are using the Solaris Operating System. Under its newly begun Eco Innovation Initiative project, Sun is going to share its experience in making data centers more energy efficient with all its customers. "New standards in datacenter design and management are not only good for the environment, but they are also good for a company's bottom line," said Sun Microsystems CIO Bob Worrall, who is responsible for reducing Sun's corporate datacenter energy usage by 20% in fiscal year 2008. "Most CIOs don't even see an energy bill, which makes little sense given that datacenters can consume a significant portion of a company's total energy draw. By working together, CIOs and CFOs can direct their efforts to successfully squeeze 'green' into - and out of - the datacenter."