Sun Microsystems says its just-opened Broomfield, Colo., data center saves a million kilowatt hours per month — enough to power 1,000 Colorado homes — and $1 million in energy bills per year without sacrificing performance. In fact, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based technology company says, the new green data center actually provides additional computing resources.

How does the data center accomplish this? "It comes down to brutal efficiency," says Dean Nelson, senior director, global lab and data center design services, at Sun. "We set out to save money, but through good design we're able to reap ecological benefits. By only using the energy you need rather than overbuilding, you're saving money and carbon emissions."

First Sun reduced its overall data center footprint. It shuttered an existing data center in Louisville, Colo., and brought it into the new facility, compressing 496,000 square feet of space into 126,000 square feet, according to Nelson. "In that compression, we were able to shed quite a bit of waste," he says.

The space savings were partially achieved with the use of a "pod" architecture, which utilizes individually powered and cooled rooms within the data center that contain up to 20 server racks each. "Modularity is very important," Nelson says. Instead of trying to push cold air around a cavernous data center space, cooling can be matched to the heat that servers in a specific pod generate, he explains. "We're only using the air conditioning we need, when we need it," Nelson comments.

By: DocMemory
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