Hey—we've moved. Visit
The Keyword
for all the latest news and stories from Google
Official Blog
Insights from Googlers into our products, technology, and the Google culture
Practical steps towards a greener, energy-efficient cloud
2 juin 2011
(Cross-posted from the
European Public Policy Blog
)
Update
June 14, 9:14am:
Videos of all the presentations at the Data Center Summit are now available on our
website
.
Data centers are very important to us—they’re critical to the cloud services we deliver. Over the last 12 years, we’ve put a lot of effort into
minimizing
the amount of energy, water and other resources we use—because it makes financial sense, and because it’s good for the environment too. That work means that today, we use
half the energy
of a typical industry data center.
Last week, we brought together more than 150 industry professionals in Zürich, Switzerland for our
second conference on data center efficiency
. Since our
first conference
two years ago in the U.S., the industry’s come a long way, with large operators now very focused on energy efficiency.
With “free cooling” we can dramatically reduce energy consumption by using the local environment to cool servers, instead of energy-intensive chillers. In our data centers we use both air cooling and evaporative cooling—and we revealed the details of the seawater cooling system we’ve custom-engineered for our new data center in Hamina, Finland.
Google is lucky enough to have the resources and experts to continually improve efficiency. But around
70% of the world’s data centers
are operated by companies that probably don’t.
That’s why we shared
five simple and low-cost steps
that any company, large or small, can use. These include using plastic meat locker curtains to separate hot and cold air, or welding your own air-conditioning chimney out of cheap sheet metal. These techniques are proven to increase energy efficiency, reduce electricity consumption and improve environmental footprint.
We also announced that we’re now participating in the European Commission’s
Code of Conduct for Data Centres
, a framework for designing and operating data centers efficiently. It ties in closely with the way we build and run our facilities, and has a robust checklist of efficiency best practices that are well worth trying out.
The main take-away was that there is no magic in data center efficiency. With the right information and a bit of creativity, anyone can make their computing infrastructure efficient. If you operate a data center or server room, please
visit our website
and make use of the techniques we’ve outlined. Videos of all the presentations from the Summit will be available on the
site
next week.
Posted by Urs Hoelzle, Senior Vice President, Technical Infrastructure
Libellés
accessibility
41
acquisition
26
ads
131
Africa
19
Android
58
apps
419
April 1
4
Asia
39
books + book search
48
commerce
12
computing history
7
crisis response
33
culture
12
developers
120
diversity
35
doodles
68
education and research
144
entrepreneurs at Google
14
Europe
46
faster web
16
free expression
61
google.org
73
googleplus
50
googlers and culture
202
green
102
Latin America
18
maps and earth
194
mobile
124
online safety
19
open source
19
photos
39
policy and issues
139
politics
71
privacy
66
recruiting and hiring
32
scholarships
31
search
505
search quality
24
search trends
118
security
36
small business
31
user experience and usability
41
youtube and video
140
Archive
2016
nov.
oct.
sept.
août
juil.
juin
mai
avr.
mars
févr.
janv.
2015
déc.
nov.
oct.
sept.
août
juil.
juin
mai
avr.
mars
févr.
janv.
2014
déc.
nov.
oct.
sept.
août
juil.
juin
mai
avr.
mars
févr.
janv.
2013
déc.
nov.
oct.
sept.
août
juil.
juin
mai
avr.
mars
févr.
janv.
2012
déc.
nov.
oct.
sept.
août
juil.
juin
mai
avr.
mars
févr.
janv.
2011
déc.
nov.
oct.
sept.
août
juil.
juin
mai
avr.
mars
févr.
janv.
2010
déc.
nov.
oct.
sept.
août
juil.
juin
mai
avr.
mars
févr.
janv.
2009
déc.
nov.
oct.
sept.
août
juil.
juin
mai
avr.
mars
févr.
janv.
2008
déc.
nov.
oct.
sept.
août
juil.
juin
mai
avr.
mars
févr.
janv.
2007
déc.
nov.
oct.
sept.
août
juil.
juin
mai
avr.
mars
févr.
janv.
2006
déc.
nov.
oct.
sept.
août
juil.
juin
mai
avr.
mars
févr.
janv.
2005
déc.
nov.
oct.
sept.
août
juil.
juin
mai
avr.
mars
févr.
janv.
2004
déc.
nov.
oct.
sept.
août
juil.
juin
mai
avr.
Feed
Google
on
Follow @google
Follow
Give us feedback in our
Product Forums
.