Green hype and green washing may be on the endangered species list and going away, however, green IT for servers, storage, networks, facilities as well as related software and management techniques that address energy efficiency including power and cooling along with e-waste, environmental health and safety related issues are topics that wont be going away anytime soon.

There is a growing green gap between green hype messaging or green washing and IT pain point issues including limits on availability or rising costs of power, cooling, floor-space as well as e-waste and environmental health and safety (PCFE). To close the gap will involve addressing green messaging and rhetoric closer to where IT organizations pain points are and where budget dollars exists that can address PCFE and other green related issues as a by-product. The green gap will also be narrowed as awareness of broader green related topics coincide with IT data center pain points, in other words, alignment of messaging with IT issues that have or will have budget dollars allocated towards them to sustain business and economic growth via IT resource usage efficiency. [ Read more ]

There are many aspects to "Green" Information Technology including servers, storage, networks and associated management tools and techniques. The reasons and focus of "Green IT" including "Green Data Storage", "Green Computing" and related focus areas are varied to address diverse needs, issues and requirements including among others:

• Power, Cooling, Floor-space, Environmental (PCFE) related issues or constraints
• Reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and other green house gases (GHGs)
• Business growth and economic sustain in an environmental friendly manner
• Proper disposal or recycling of environmental harmful retired technology components
• Reduction or better efficiency of electrical power consumption used for IT equipment
• Cost avoidance or savings from lower energy fees and cooling costs
• Support data center and application consolidation to reduce cost and management
• Enable growth and enhancements to application service level objectives
• Maximize the usage of available power and cooling resources available in your region
• Compliance with local or federal government mandates and regulations
• Economic sustain and ability to support business growth and service improvements
• General environmental awareness and stewardship to save and protect the earth

Consequently your view and needs or interests around "Green" IT may be from a electrical power conservation perspective to maximize your power consumption or to adapt to a given power footprint or ceiling. Your focus around "Green" Data Centers and Green Storage may be from a carbon savings standpoint or proper disposition of old and retired IT equipment or from a data center cooling standpoint. Another area of focus may be that you are looking to reduce your data footprint to align with your power, cooling and green footprint while enhancing application and data service delivery to your customers [ Read more...  ].

Check out the StorageIO Blog to see what Greg Schulz has to say about green computing and energy efficient IT.

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