BCS develops greener data centre initiatives

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The data centre specialist group (DCSG) chair of the British Computing Society (BCS) has confirmed it is in talks with the Carbon Trust to develop greener data centre initiatives.

News of the collaboration emerged last week, following the announcement by the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) secretary Hilary Benn that it was spending an extra £4 billion in the next three years on energy efficiency initiatives. This included a £47.7 million share of the extra funding allotted to the Carbon Trust technology programmes.

Zahl Limbuwala, DCSG chair, told IT PRO: "We are involved in some potential cooperative work with the Carbon Trust. But we're at a point where I can't discuss specific details."

He did say, however, that he hoped the extra government funding would help to promote more research into unravelling the complexity of data centre environments, as well as provide assistance to businesses to practically reduce their carbon footprint.

"More research needs to be done at a deep technical level to provide some sort of useful output that will help business gain a better understanding of what it is they are trying to manage," he said.

Limbuwala cited the example proposal of using bio-diesel to fuel back-up generators. "It seems an obvious idea for reducing a data centre's carbon footprint," he said. "But not much research has been done into the stability of bio-diesel when stored for long periods. The worst case scenario would be that the bio-diesel may block the back-up generator's pumps [that] are actually needed."

He also said the Carbon Trust and DCSG could work together on behalf of the professional IT body to transfer information communication technology skills and knowledge for better developed green IT initiatives.

And he added that work within the DCSG was progressing to produce a data centre modelling tool that "a data centre operator could use to understand energy use and efficiency." It is hoped the complex mathematical data centre energy model created last year can form the basis of a tool Limbuwala said was in plan to be ready for initial release by the end of this year.

"Anything we announce about our work with the Carbon Trust will be sooner than that, maybe in the next couple of months," added Limbuwala.

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