AGM's & DC's

Its the time of year for AGM's, I've been to 3 over the past month.
I was lucky enough to be voted back onto the BCS Green IT & Data Centre specialist groups.
These groups really are at the cutting edge of technology and thought leadership in our fields.
We've got our collective fingers into a lot of pies, indeed in some cases we're making the pies, for instance the DCSG basically developed both the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres and the CEEDA award.
These are in the case of the EU CoC a list of best practices to adopt within a Data Centre to reduce energy consumption, less energy = more money to spend on newer more energy efficient equipment meaning your business will benefit through less cost and IT that supports not hinders the business.
Its surprising how many businesses do not make this connection, still I suppose they'll get around to it too late and either go bust or stumble along not making that much profit.

The EU CoC is voluntary at the present time and an organisation can be either a participant or an endorser of the code, as a participant you are required to implement the best practicies within a 3 year time period and provide mandatory energy and temperature information on a monthly basis to the JRC. As an endorser you are required to provide information to potential clients that supports the EU CoC. Carbon3IT Ltd is an endorser to the code and we are also a member of the Best Practices committee, this means that we get to see all suggestions in any area of the code, decide with the rest of the committee to ascertain if they are of merit and technically viable, and approve them for further consideration by the executive board. Further information on the EU CoC can be found on this link EU CoC.

One thing to bear in mind that the official EU CoC definition of a Data Centre is ANY room, floor or dedicated facility that houses compute equipment, this means that communications cupboards or dedicated server rooms anywhere are covered.
Another thing to bear in mind is that whilst the code is voluntary at the present time, it could be converted to become an EU directive, if this did happen, the UK govt may be required to present primary legislation to enact a "Data Centre Energy Efficiency Act".
This has not happened and is not anyones radar at the moment but, consider this, it is possible that any new government cloud computing system will have as a part of its procurement assessment matrix, that potential suppliers of (cloud services) will not be considered unless they are a) Participants in the EU CoC and have as a minimum a BRONZE CEEDA award.
I'll leave you to mull on the challenges and opportunities...

On to CEEDA, now this is based upon the EU CoC and is essentially an award given with reference to how many of the best practices are actually in use in a data centre at a given time. There are 4 categories, no award, meaning that there is evidence of some of the best practices but further work is required, Bronze, meaning that a specific set of the best practice matrix can be evidenced, Silver, building on the Bronze set but also adding some additional practices, these are usually one that take a little more effort and thought into the implementation, and possibly not going to be seen in an old monolithic facility (old in this sense means over 7-10 years old) unless an upgrade has been carried out. The final award is Gold, it builds on both Bronze and Silver and would be an example of excellent best practice, this is only likely to be awarded to a new build DC with a PUE of 1.5 or less.
For those of you who do not know what PUE is, an official definition and how to calculate it can be found on this link Green Grid PUE information.

That enough from me on this very warm weekend, well done to England in the RWC11 and Charlton in the Nationwide League 1. Good luck to the Irish tomorrow.