Musings on the Data Centre of the Future - Part 1

We've been working in the field of Green IT for over 10 years now, and its been an interesting journey.

Some readers will know that I had my "Road to Damascus" in 2003, when I visited the Eden Project in Cornwall, we'd spent the day walking through the tropical and semi arid desert biomes and the external areas and on our depature, we had to exit via the shop. The shop was full of all the sorts of things you'd expect a living laboratory site to have, books about gardening, tools, sustainably sourced knick knacks etc etc etc. However, there was one single item hidden high on a shelfing unit that did make me "double take" it was a recycled circuit board, something that had failed final inspection, and instead of throwing it in a landfill, or indeed sending it with a load more electronic waste and dump it in Africa or China, someone had decided that it would make an excellent plate or mouse mat.

I remember looking at it, and thinking thats a terrible way for a computer to die, there must be something better we can do with obselete or surplus computing equipment.

That moment, was my conversion, from a systems engineer working for a major UK MSP, I spent the next 6 years making my plans, I would seek to obtain a degree from the Open University, that covered the environmental issues and perhaps add development and climate change aspects to the problem, I graduated in 2010 with a BSc (Hons) Tech with environment and development (Open) degree, and started my own "Sustainable IT consultancy, Carbon3IT Ltd in August 2009 and we officially opened in Jan 2010.

The last 11 years or so have been the most satisfying of my career to date, I've travelled to places (paid by other people) that I'd never thought I ever get to, Sydney, Hong Kong, Sao Paolo, Austin, most of Europe just for starters, I walked around some interesting data centres, some great, some in need of a lot of energy efficiency attention.

Anyway, I digress, the purpose of this post is to muse on the data centre of the future.

Now, many commentators of all things data centre will go on record and state that the data centre of the future looks very much like the data centre of today and to be honest there is a lot of credence that should be paid to those that have this point of view, it is a very practical approach, and given that data centres are designed to last between 15-20 years, a valid one.

However, this is very 20th Century thinking, and we have to consider the wider aspects of energy security, climate change and to determine exactly what we are doing with our IT systems and question some of the traditional facts.

So, where can we find a "blueprint" that can make us really think about our ICT systems and how we deliver them?

The EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency) is the best thing I have come across that can assist us in our quest.

Put simply, it forms the basis of a radical strategic and cultural change programme that will yield significant benefits across the entire corporate landscape, reducing cost, reducing energy consumption and thus carbon emissions, and combined with the 5 major ISO Management Systems, making the organisation, leaner, fitter and with the necessary control systems to deal with literally anything that can be thrown at it.

During the EURECA project, we identified the Magnificent 7, a toolbox of data centre standards, guidelines and ISO management systems that all prudent DC operators should follow that can help them acheive an ICT ECO-SYSTEM that actively reduces energy and carbon, meets business goals and most impending or current regulation and provides a roadmap to the future.

So, what are the Magnificent 7?

ISO9001 Quality Management Systems

ISO 14001 Environmental Management Systems

ISO22301 Buiness Continuity Management Systems

ISO 27001 Information Security Management Systems

ISO50001 Energy Management Systems

EN Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency)

EN 50600 Series of Data Centre Design, Build and Operate Standards

The ISO Management Standards speak for themselves, the correct application of the requirements of each standard (and obviously, the integration of common areas) build a foundation of excellence.

However, and I believe that this is a major problem, too many organisations pay lip service to the "spirit" of the standard and fail to really understand what the system is for, they often see it as a necessary evil, that they only undertake "certification" to meet other procurement or tender requirements.

But, if they really understand what the Standard is designed to achieve and implemented the requirements correctly, then the organisation will be able to meet the energy and carbon legislation, reduce cost, and meet business goals.

The EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency), provides for a radical strategic and cultural change, briefly, as the actual implementation actions that can be taken, are our USP and we charge for it! are as follows:

Management, Section 3 of the EUCOC covers Data Centre Utilisation, Management and Planning, in this section we see that the very 1st best practice is the "enabler" of all the others, it is quite simply "group involvement" in essence, gather a group of people that touch the data centre, you could call them stakeholders and have regular meetings so that everybody knows what everyone else is doing , this helps prevent those Friday night emergencies, when someone in the business has ordered loads of kit and whats it up and running by Monday morning, but didn't tell you. So, in order to fulfill this request you have to run and around and organise, new power, new connectivity and the installation of this kit.

It's in this section where we see the introduction of the "concept" of the management systems, note that I did not say ISO Management systems, merely management systems and this is because the EUCOC is  NOT Prescriptive. Indeed, we mention 3 specific management systems, an Environmental, an Energy and an Asset management system, we point to the ISOs but do not specify that they should be an ISO certificated system.

We also introduce the concept of sustainable energy usage, alternative power generation technologies,  management of air quality, conscise documentation, and a comprehensive training and development programme for staff.

In section 3.3 we bring into play, the concept of thinking about resilience levels, lean provisioning and part load concepts.

Section 4 is all about the IT with best practices on procurement, temperature and humidity ranges for new equipment (so, you can begin to operate at the higher ASHRAE levels and reap energy savings.)

Section 4.2 is IT deployment, software efficiency etc.

4.3 talks about the management of the existing estate, audit the physical and virtual estates, perhaps you've got "server creep" some virtual machines may have been fired up by a dev team and used for a project, that project finished 3 years ago, but you've still got these VMs cluttering up your stack. A comprehensive audit can identify targets for optimisation.

4.4 is all about the data, essentially, what have we got, where is it, and do we need it anymore? can we reduce our storage energy bill by the prudent management of that data?

Section 5, the largest section of the EUCOC contains the best practices appertaining to Cooling, and covers, Air Flow Management & Design, Cooling Management, Temp and Humidity Settings, Cooling Plant, CRAC/Hs, Direct Liquid Cooling and the reuse of DC waste heat.

6, is all about power, specifically UPS.

7 is other DC equipment, lighting, and having sensors to report back temp/humidity, energy etc to an advanced DCiM.

Section 8 is the building itself, like a feasibility or site location exercise, but not quite, covering some design/build principles, location stuff and water issues, but to be honest the EN 50600, 2-1 Building construction covers them in more detail.

Section 9 is the Monitoring section, and as we all know, you cannot manage what you cannot measure, so this section provides the detail and what, where and how you should be measuring all the data points within the DC.

Section 10 covers the best practices that will be implemented in following editions, so for instance, in the 2020 edition (v11) there is one best practice, 5.7.5 Capture Ready Infrastructure "Consider installing "Capture Ready Infrastructure to take advantage of, and distribute available waste heat during new build and retrofit projects. Section 5.7.x is the Reuse of Data Centre waste heat section.

Section 11 are Items under consideration, what this section is, is essentially a holding area for proposed best practices, pending additional information, sector feedback or the development of a new technology, so for instance, in the 2020 edition (v11) there are 3 best practices, the first is software efficiency development definitions and/or metrics this has been located in this section since the EUCOC began in 2009 and really is a souce of embarassment as the software community really haven't grasped the mettle and come up with any definitions or metrics.

Two new best practices were added to this section in 2019, both by myself, under the remit of the CATALYST Project www.project-catalyst.eu  the first is Network Energy use, this is basically a request for organisations to calculate the "hidden" energy when they move to the Cloud or colocation service, if you take your equipment and locate it elsewhere, your users will expend more energy than if it was located on your site, it may not seem much, but there are two aspects to this, one is the energy cost itself (although this is borne by others (your carriers and the telecommunication operators, and secondly, to identify all the possible SPOF points. Although the internet is self-healing there are some SPOF points.

The second is to be aware of, and plan for energy flexibility or energy storage services that may arise from any Smart Grid implementations in your local area, as a large energy user, you will be in the Utilities crosshairs.

So, there we have it, the first musings on the Data Centre of the Future and my belief that we actually already have the foundations already laid, we now need to build on them and that will be the topic for the second part of my musings on the Data Centre of the Future, whcih will probably be published in late September/Early October.

Lockdown blues...

nah, not in Carbon3IT Towers!

We're very busy at the moment and have a number of time critical tasks that are er, time critical so I really shouldn't be "blogging" but its a nice day, so...

Its time for a little update, we continue to work with the CATALYST project and you can see the fruits of our labours in the new project website, which you can find here this new sharper, quicker site is a coproduction between the project (in the guise of my good self) and Cobra Systems, a Dutch member of Green IT Amsterdam  more info here
I, in my role as project manager for the project on behalf of Green IT Amsterdam, where I am under contract as their "in house" data centre consultant, scoped the brief, provided content and have been the admin webmaster for the past few weeks, i think it looks and feels great and we'd love your feedback.

We're also using Cobra to design and build a new website for the CATALYST Green Data Centre Roadmap, which you can see below:

This map has an associated Green Data Centre Handbook, which is the, ahem, time critical task that I'm supposed to be doing instead of writing this article!

The new GDCR website will feature an "interactive" version of the roadmap and access to the
handbook as well as some other interesting stuff which will remain secret for now.
The Cobra team and myself, finalised most of the design earlier this week and we expect to have a provisional release by mid June, and a public version ready by the end of June, it should be noted that we have been working on this since early January, but the coronavirus and travel restrictions plus work on the main website has sucked out a lot of our planning time, still we're nearly there and I'm very excited about the project, not just for the CATALYST project itself but for the wider datacentre industry.

We're, that is Green IT Amsterdam, are finalising another datacentre project, funded by Horizon 2020 which will start in September, so in essence, we have another 3 years of work with Green IT Amsterdam on this new project to look forward to, we'll keep you informed via our usual social media feeds.

On the CEEDA front, we finalised and released the last CEEDA conducted before lockdown and it was quite hairy! I'd travelled to Brindisi on the 8th March, conducted the assessment on the 9th and was due to fly back on the 10th, when lockdown hit Italy, not the northern area but the entire country, I found out via text message from a good friend and client on the 9th in the evening, cue much angst from the family, but it turned out alright in the end, I flew back the following morning (10th) and then spent 14 days in self-isolation, missing, much to my annoyance, the Data Centre World event in London.

So, whats the outlook for Carbon3IT ? Surprisingly good, we have a training session and CEEDA assessment scheduled for October, our partners at DCD have had a lot of enquiries for CEEDA post lockdown, we've been asked to present and host at a number of data centre events scheduled to take place in Q3/4 of course many of which have already been moved from their original dates due to corona, and now rescheduled, all of which are pending lockdown and the suspension of travel restrictions. We'll be working on CATALYST until September, possibly longer and we have our new project, so all good.

So, until next time, wash those hands and keep safe.

International Data Centre Day - 25th March 2020

First of all, a massive shout out to all those involved in Data Centres, be it, operations, construction, or consultancy, that are working so hard to keep the internet running globally, the connected world depends on it.

Not to forget, the millions of healthcare professional globally fighting the coronavirus.

Data Centres process data, the data that runs banks, logistics, academia, governments and almost every aspect of modern life, use a contactless card to buy groceries?, you will route through a data centre, buy on the web? the web and data centres enable not only the ability to view millions of items, but also to pay for it, conducting research? perhaps on the Coronavirus? Data Centres house the data and do the number crunching. Doing maths homework, the application will be running in a data centre and may route through multiple smaller data centres to get to your home.

Here, at Carbon3IT Ltd we work in supporting data centres with a number of  services including ad-hoc training, consultancy, compliance on the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency) (EUCOC), ISOs including ISO9001 (Quality), ISO14001 (Environmental) ISO22301 (Business Continuity) ISO27001 (Information Security) and finally ISO50001 (Energy) Management Systems.

We are also ESOS Lead Assessors.

We can provide guidance on EN50600. We work in standards development, primarily the EUCOC and EN 50600.

We also conduct data centre audits, for EUCOC, CEEDA (Certified Energy Efficiency Data Centres Award) and for EN 50600 Gap Analysis.

We wish all data centres, their employees, the supply chain and use the very best International Data Centre Day 2020!

Keep safe, and wash those hands!

EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency) v11 Update

The 2020 version of the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency) was published in January, however due to an oversight the reporting form had not been updated until earlier today.

Below is a conscise list of EVERY change made to the reporting form.

New applicants are advised to download all the guidance documentation before completing the forms, (or seek expert advice from ourselves) existing participants should use the latest 2020 reporting form v11 when published, to advise the EU-JRC of progress against all best practices and any action plans, as well as provide updated energy data.

Given the recent EU announcements that "data centres can and should be climate neutral by 2030" and that they are considering measures, it is highly recommended that all data centres in the EU and UK consider becoming a participant in the EUCOC as soon as possible.

This recommendation applies to all hyperscale, colocation and enterprise sites.

All the documents can be downloaded from this link

Carbon3IT Ltd has been working with the EU-JRC since 2012, we sit on the best practices committee and provide under contract, the review services for all participants.

However, we also provide pre-EUCOC reviews and can complete the application and reporting forms on your behalf for a set fee (currently £3000+VAT per site, discounts are available for multiple sites) in whch case we will inform the EU-JRC that we have provided this service and an alternate reviewer will be engaged.
To date we have completed 40 EUCOC applications on behalf of global clients and all have been accepted on initial application.

The best practices for 2020 have been updated as follows:


3.3.2 Practice Updated
3.2.4 Practice Updated
3.2.5 Practice Updated
3.2.6 Practice Updated
3.2.8 Practice Updated
3.2.12 Practice Updated 
3.2.13 Practice Updated
3.2.14 Practice has become MANDATORY and Note Updated
3.2.15 Practice has become MANDATORY and Note Updated

4.1.1 Practice Updated
4.1.2 Practice Updated
4.1.3 Practice Updated
4.1.4 Practice Updated
4.1.6 Practice Updated
4.1.10 Practice Updated
4.1.11 Practice Updated
4.1.14 Practice Updated
4.1.15 Practice Updated

4.2.6 Practice Updated
4.2.8 *New Practice* 

4.3.2 Practice Updated
4.3.5 Practice Updated
4.3.6 Practice Updated

4.4.4 Practice Updated

5.1.3 Practice has become MANDATORY and Updated

5.2.6 Practice Updated

5.6.1 Practice renumbered (previously 5.4.2.9)

5.7.1 Practice renumbered (previously 5.6.1)
5.7.2 Practice renumbered (previously 5.6.2
5.7.3 Practice renumbered (previously 5.6.3)
5.7.4 Practice renumbered (previously 5.6.4)

8.3.3 Practice updated
9.2.2 Practice has become MANDATORY for new build/retrofit and updated

Please also note that there are 3 new best practices scheduled for publication next year, these are

5.7.5 Capture Read Infrastructure - 

Consider installing ‘Capture Ready’ Infrastructure to take advantage of, and distribute, available waste heat during new build and retrofit projects.

This is scheduled to become a mandatory best practice from 2021

11.2 Network Energy Use - 

When purchasing new cloud services or assessing a cloud strategy, assess the impact on network equipment usage and the potential increase or decrease in energy consumption with the aim of being to inform purchasing decisions.

The minimum scope should include inside the data centre only.

The ambition is to include overall energy consumption and energy efficiency including that related to multiple site operation and the network energy use between those sites.

11.3 Smart Grid - 

Continue to evaluate the use of energy storage and usage to support Smart Grid. A Smart Grid is a solution that employs a broad range of information technology resources, allowing for a potential reduction in electricity waste and energy costs

The Phoney War is over....

Back in 2008, the British Computer Society, Chartered Institute for IT, the Department for Farming and Rural Affairs (DeFRA) and the EU - Joint Research Centre launched the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency) also known as the EUCOC, comprising of 2 parts, the first a series of best practices for data centre operators to use, to really optimise their facilties using a combination of tangible (those that you can touch such as blanking panels, or change, such as temperature settings) and intangible (such as changes to policy, processes and procedures covering procurement, service take on, and management) And the second, a scheme for those using (participants) or promoting (endorsing) the EUCOC.

To date, there are some 350+ Data Centre "participants" from various organisations, a combination of colocation, hyperscale and enterprise organisations, and 250+ "endorsers" covering consultancies, organisations, trade bodies and suppliers to the industry.
There are annual reporting requirements for both participants and endorsers.
Participants are required to report (by the end of February) energy consumption information, whether any new best practice has been adopted and progress against an action plan which is formulated on intial application.
Endorsers are required to report any "endorsing" actions taken place annually from the anniversary of their initial application.

From the initial application, data is extracted from the reporting forms and is used as the input into a report from the reviewer (currently ourselves) to the EU-JRC on a regular but not annual basis.
Energy consumption data is tabulated and forms inputs into research conducted by the working group, where it is used to provide support to policy makers with the EC and EP.

As we are not party to the annual update participants data or the endorser annual reports we cannot report on the frequency or accuracy of any information passed to the EU-JRC.

However, many of our readers will know that we provide pre-EUCOC reviews and in some cases actually complete the reporting forms and participation applications on behalf of clients as a paid for service, currently £3000+VAT per site, although discounts are available for multiple sites.

Readers will also know that the EUCOC best practices, but not the scheme, have been adopted by the CEN/CENELEC/ETSI standards body as a technical report under the EN 50600 series of Data Centres, design, build and operator standards and available from national standards bodies as "PD CLC/TR 50600-99-1:2019"

So, why sign up and provide the energy data etc? Well, it was felt, and in some EU member states actually implemented, that public sector procurement of data centre and data centres services (such as cloud) would require, as a scoring element of the tender process, that the data centre had to be a participant of the EUCOC. This is certainly the case for the UK G-Cloud and other EU national governments, although not actively policed.

It should also be noted that the scheme is VOLUNTARY!

From our own work with CEEDA (which is an external (paid for) assessment based upon a subset of the EUCOC and ISO30134/EN50600 KPIs), we have over the last 8 yrs or so visited 60 CEEDA sites, compiled around 20 EUCOC reporting forms on behalf of clients, and reviewed some 200 participant application forms on behalf of the EU-JRC and discussions with colleagues in the industry where we discuss energy efficiency and the implementation of the best practices, especially the intangible elements, it has to be said that, some, but not all of our clients are paying lip service to the EUCOC and it could be argued merely ticking boxes with little or no intention of acting upon the action plan that we create.

There are many reasons for this, primarily client SLA's or indifference, a lack of skills within the organisation, lack of funding, or indifference from senior managers and this is understandable when there is no external compulsion such as regulation or the need for an operating licence.

The past 12 years or so, can now be considered the "phoney war" as it is clear, in light of the recent announcement from the EU regarding the Green Deal, especially the following statement...

"Yet it is also clear that the ICT sector also needs to undergo its own green transformation. The environmental footprint of the sector is significant, estimated at 5-9% of the world’s total electricity use and more than 2% of all emissions. Data centres and telecommunications will need to become more energy efficient, reuse waste energy, and use more renewable energy sources. They can and should become climate neutral by 2030. 

that the phoney war is over and that we can expect measures from the EU to persuade data centres to actively up their game,  and that they will be required to become more energy efficient (and there are a couple of methods for this but at the core is the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency) and other EU polices such as EMAS and BEMP, reuse waste heat and use more renewable energy sources.)

All of these 3 elements are contained in the CATALYST project which we are working on, on behalf of Green IT Amsterdam, more information on the website www.project-catalyst.eu

We'll be on the road talking about the project and wider aspects of the potential policy changes at the following events:

Data Centre World London March 11/12th 
Data Centre Forum Oslo March 19th
DCD Energy Smart Stockholm April 27/28th
DDI/UN Copenhagen May 15th

Check out the CATALYST project website for more event info here

We've been working in this area for the past 10 yrs and have built up a wealth of exprience and knowledge in the field, so if you need any practical advice contact us on info@carbon3it.com or send us a message on linked in or twitter feed. 

Carbon3IT Ltd 2018 Update

I'll start by stating that this has been a very diverse year in terms of sales, we appear to have broken new ground in various ways and our income streams have essentially quadrupled and financially this year has been marginally better than last year, and we have a number of projects already booked for 2019 but these are essentially restricted to Q1 and we (and it seems the Government and 100% of UK inhabitants) have no real clue as to what will happen after the 29th March 2019 (Brexit Day).

At the time of writing this article, Parliament is in recess for Christmas, and no real progress has been made at all, the EU Withdrawal Agreement that T May has come back with, has no prospect of making it through the house, so all the talk is "my deal, no deal or no brexit" we'd prefer "no brexit" but there are some who wish to jump out of the UK aeroplane without a parachute, thank you but we'd rather not.
I'm not going to gaze into my crystal ball at this time, except to say that 2019 is going to be a VERY interesting year.

So, January 2018 saw us preparing for our final EURECA project sessions, attending kickstart.eu and presenting at the BroadGroup DataCloud event on the topic of energy aand energy efficiency, as you'd expect the EUCOC featured heavily as did some of the UK energy legislation, standards and thoughts for the future. We were quite busy at this time preparing some BRIGHTTALK seminars to support our final EURECA sessions. We also had a conversation with some chaps at Building Research Establishment (BRE) but more on that later.

February saw the final EURECA session and it was a bumper event, we had a day at the UEL for around 75 delegates, and then attended the Data Centre Summit where we had a number of presentations scheduled, finally rounded off with a series of webinars and an event at the Houses of Parliament. We also manged to fit in a number of client meetings, the first to discuss the use of our services for a large global data centre supply chain supplier, the second to discuss a project in North Africa, the third to review some EUCOC updates for a large global telco/colo provider. We also found the time to visit the HoP for a policy connect launch meeting for sustainable ICT inlcuding data centres for which we and EURECA had provided some content.

March was an intersting month, we met up with our good friends at Ekkosense to discuss items of  mutual interest (air flow in data centres mainly), we attended the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell show at the NEC, mainly to ascertain whether the technology could be used for data centre (yes, they can but it requires a major rethink and redesign of the data centre!) The month was rounded off by our annual visit to Data Centre World, my thoughts on this are that I remember it being very very cold! We also went to Amsterdam for an ICTFootprint event were we spoke on the topic of Green IT and also Sustainable Data Centres, we also undertook a datacentre audit for a midlands university

April was a fairly quiet month due to Easter but we did have some EUCOC work and some work via our Dutch partners Green IT Amsterdam.

Early May, was the Data Centres North event, and we managed to fit 2 trips into the Netherlands (the 3rd and 4th this year"), the first, to provide some basic data centre foundation training to another Dutch partner Asperitas, and the second to meet up with a Green IT Amsterdam client to develop their Green Data Centre Campus Sustainability Framework, we also attended the Data Centre Solutions Awards and a couple of webinars on the emerging Data Centre EMAS criteria where we provided some content and discussion.

We love June, it might be because we get to go to Monaco for the DataCloud Europe event, as usual we were invited as the guest of the EU-JRC and partly funded by our friends at the DCA. We love it because the weather improves and it tends to get hot, this year was no exception it got really hot and for a long time. We also presented to a selected audience for ABB on the topic of "The EUCOC and other animals (I may have been watching too much "The Durells" in the previous couple of weeks whilst building the presentation), we also attended the BICSI and MIXingIT event as well as England first WC game (thank you Keysource!)

In July, we made our way to Manchester for the Data Centre Transformation conference (and another England WC game), attended the datacentre.me networking event and the launch of Interxion's London 3 facility at the London Assembly/Mayors Office, that was a very good night, the view is magnificent,  the Tower of London, Tower Bridge, and all the city laid out in front of you, the weather was so good that you could see for miles!. The next week saw me in Brussels to visit a new client to prepare 3 EUCOC applications,  Later that week it was also a family event, a christening that co-incided with the school holidays so we went up to Manchester, stayed the night, and met up with 2 clients the following  day. We also managed a trip to Cambridge to visit another potential partner/client and the girls enjoyed the city (again it was very hot!)

August is always very quiet, but not this year! We had a meeting with a Landlord for a very interesting data centre site very close to us, in fact it is the closest and I've been dying to get in there and mooch around, it appeared that my wish was about to come true! We also visited a client in London at their Class 2 facility (sadly no business from them!) We rounded the month off by providing some training to BRE personnel (the result of that phone call in January and a meeting with them at DCW in March (thats how long our sales cycle can be!)) that itself was topped off by a visit to a Data Centre (We went to Interxion's London site). I've always felt that data centre training is too one sided but thats not a topic for discussion now, but rest assured that plans are afoot!

In September I was back in Amsterdam for a brief visit to attend the launch of the Catalyst project with our partner Green IT Amsterdam, this project is seeking to promote the reuse of data centre waste heat for other purposes, such as district heat systems and the like, its going to be a very interesting project and we are assisting them. We then flew to Helsinki for a CEEDA assessment, this assessment was a "Design Operate CEEDA" and we were reviewing the operational elements, I can state that this was an exceptional facility and well worth its Gold accreditation.
We also found the time to attend the DCA golf day where once again we managed to just miss the "worst golfer" prize.
Later, in the month we visited Leeds with a client and their client and then attended the DCA Annual Members meeting coupled with a couple of steering group meetings namely the "energy efficiency" and new "liquid alliance"

We always tend to schedule the EUCOC Annual Best Practices meeting around this time of year, and this year it was scheduled for early October, this was follwed by a visit to London for IP expo and then a trip to Bristol to meet up with the Council to discuss their "Energy Leap" project. We also visited the data centre closest to me to conduct the audit on behalf of the landlord, my dream had come true! Its always good to visit data centres and check out the technology and management systems in use, but this was a joy to behold, the site was built when I was 11 years old, (I'm 54 now, but feel 24!) and I have to say that for its age, it was in exceptional condition, true it did look a bit tired but hey, this girl had been working her socks off 24/7/365 for over 40 years, hopefully she'll get a make over soon (watch this space!)

November is conference season, but we managed to fit in a CEEDA assessment and an EUCOC preparation meeting with a new client as well as attend a few non standard (i.e. non data centre events) as well, the month started with the DCD Converged event at London's Old Billingsgate, and then I attended the Low Carbon Britain event. We then met up with a client with regard to assisting them with their proposed ISO50001 certification (we got the job, and are currently preparing draft documents for them to review and amend to suit their needs, later we'll check the policies, processes and procedures and review the evidence prior to the certification process, which we'll attend.
Later that week I travelled to Lincoln to visit an old client who has finally managed to get a site and is starting to build a very interesting data centre, more on that project next year!
The week after I made my way over to Dublin for Data Centres Ireland and then London for a CBRE briefing on Standards (a subject I know a little about!). We spent the rest of the month preparing and writing our report on the data centre audit we'd completed for our client in Warwick. We also managed to get tickets for the Networking Event of the Year, which is the DataCentre.ME Christmas Party, held on the Tattershall Castle, a boat moored between the House of Parliament and Hungerford Bridge, with excellent views of the London Eye and of course the River.

December is nearly always quite quiet, but not this year, we were invited to the Man Utd v Arsenal match at Old Trafford at the Captains Table, this is corporate hospitality at its finest, 3 course meal, drinks, programme, gift and a very good evenings entertainment (not on the football side of things unfortunately, although it was a 2-2 draw, the game wasn't that great!) followed by a quick trip to London to attend the DCD Awards. I love going to the DCD Awards, and this year was excellent, the EURECA project WON! the Initative of the Year award, so many thanks to the entire EURECA team for winning this very prestigious award, which has made and will continue to make data centres in the EU energy efficient and sustainable.
The next week I met with a potential new partner who is interested in heat recovery and reuse in the DC sector, this was followed by a small networking event run by the excellent Caroline Hitchens and her DataCentre.Me team. The day after I attended the BSI TCT7/3 standards committee meeting which of course develops the EN50600 series of data centre design, build and operate standards.
We had an update meeting with our ISO50001 client and then a couple of meetings in London to sort out some new work (potentially) for next year.

As I stated earlier, next year is going to be very interesting indeed and as we have no idea as how its all going to pan out, we're going to keep our powder dry for the time being.

But, that said, we will continue to offer the following services:

EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres Review and Preparation
CEEDA assessements (with our DCD partners)
ISO Management Systems for ISO9001/14001/22301/27001 and 50001
Data Centre Audits (with our M&E partners)
Data Centre Training (on site, and tailored to your requirements)
Data Centre Support Services - Compliance

Special Services, if you have a problem that needs solving, let us know, through our wide network of consultants, supply chains and operators we've probably come across the problem before and therefore may be able to help


Finally, we'd like to wish all our customers, suppliers and industry collegues the very best wishes for 2019

The next blog post will be the 4th in our series "Air v Liquid" and this article will be on the cost side of things scheduled to be published early in the new year.

As always, until next time.

If you need to get in touch with us, please use the following:

info@carbon3it.com
www.carbon3it.com
@carbon3it (Twitter/Skype)

October Update

Its been a busy few months since our last update but exciting times as well.
The EURECA project continues at pace, more information can be found on the project website www.dceureca.eu
As many will be aware the project has been extended due to two new public sector data centre project that the project is working with, data has been collated on both and the findings are due to be presented to the clients in the next few weeks
Our next workshop will take place in conjunction with Data Centres Ireland, more information and registration can be found on this link http://www.datacentres-ireland.com/

Its always great to go back to Ireland, and I'm sure that a great time will be had by delegates and exhibitors alike.

As a result of this extension we are still available for work on EURECA pilot projects, please let us know if you would like some free consultancy (terms and conditions apply).

Our midlands datacentre standards project has been cancelled due to various issues, but we have been in discussions with the principles about a new data centre project in Manchester.
This site will also incorporate the  "National Data Centre Academy" Manchester facility, this will be somewhat smaller than we have envisaged but will provide a great location to prove our proof of concept which will hopefully lead onto the main facility, which we hope will still be located in the Birmingham area.
On that note, if you are interested in learning more about the NDCA and its facilities please drop me a line at john.booth@nationaldcacademy.com

The NDCA exhibited with our partners (Data Centre Alliance and IDC Achill Rock) at edie.live on the 23/24th May 2017 at the NEC in Birmingham, we had a number of visitors and I presented on the topic of sustainability for data centres, all in all the event was moderately suscessful in terms of potential new clients but more so on the awareness side of things.
Many enterprises still consider the data centre as a necessary evil and of course IT departments still have trouble with Shadow IT (The use of unauthorised cloud and colocation services) but in my opinion them only have themselves to blame (catch up with my at an industry event to find out more!)

The NDCA project is essentially a step change in the delivery of data centre training, we'll have the usual classroom environment, but we're adding special rooms to deliver practical skills including something very special.

I completed 3 CEEDA assessments, one, one in Ireland and 2 in Gibraltar, one is a new assessment of a legacy facility, one, a reassessment and one, a new facility. We also have a number in the pipe for later this year, I'll keep you posted.
If you would like a Certified Energy Efficiency for Data Centres Award (CEEDA), please visit CEEDA.
We provide a number of pre-ceeda and EUCOC services, please contact us directly on info@carbon3it.com for pricing and availability.

Our work with the DCA continues and we have been very busy with 2 exciting new projects, of which more will be revealed by the DCA themselves, we wouldn't want to steal their thunder.
We attended the Datacentre Transformation Conference in Manchester on the 11th July,  and the DCA industry Update (approximately 40 delegates turned up and a very good networking session in a local hostelry, followed by a ather excellent curry ensued.

The latest DCA Golf Day was an eventful affair, I was unable to attend the morning session due to other commitments (more on that below) and in the afternoon it was literally 4 seasons in one day, we had rain, hail, mist, and finally sun, conditions were challenging but as usual the drinks buggy provided some much needed liquid refreshments (hic). The John Booth Wooden Spoon Award (named after my goodself and indicating a really rubbish golfer, usually me!) in fact was awarded to someone else, so I'm not sure that it is an indication of improvement, or that this year even worse golfers were in attendance.

The reason I was unable to attend the morning session was that we (NDCA) applied for some assistance from the Climate Launchpad programme and we had undertaken some 10 sessions with mentors to sharpen up a pitch deck in order to obtain finance. This was a very useful exprience and whilst we were ultimately unsuccessful (we came 4th!) it provided some strategic focus to the NDCA, which is always good.

Last week I was in Milan for the 2018 EUCOC best practices review, together with 20 or so colleagues from data centres owners, operators and supply chain organisations across the EU, as usual we reviewed S10/11 with a view to moving and enhancing the best practices, reviewed some external comments for new or revisions to current best practices and introduced some new bets practices at the event. The latest versions (2018) for the best practices document and the reporting forms are now in preparation and will be published when they are finalised.

In early June we were at the Data Cloud Congress, Monaco, this is the premier event in the data centre annual event season, and I am lucky enough to obtain free tickets through my work reviewing the EUCOC participant applications, thank you to Broad Group and the EU-JRC.

Its always a pleasure to meet up with colleagues from across the EU, but to quote a famous film, what happens in Monaco, stays in Monaco.

We ahve a busy few months ahead but we will attempt to attend the following events

5th October IP Expo - London
2nd November IM Meeting London AM
2nd November UKDCIG London PM
6th November BCS DCIG London Committee Meeting/AGM
7-8th November DCD Zettastructure
16th November EU GPP Seville, Spain
22 - 23rd November, Data Centres Ireland


Until next time...

May 2017 Update

Its been a busy few months since our last update but exciting and sometimes quite stressful times as well. I did promise an update in April but circumstances and travel conspired to make a lot of demands on my time, anyway heres the May update.

The EURECA project continues at pace, more information can be found on the project website www.dceureca.eu
We've had 3 events since the last update, namely Stockholm, Berlin and Barcelona, all the events were fairly well attended and we've had some impressive speakers from public sector organisations detailing some of their own projects and ones where the EURECA project can help out. We have a meeting scheduled next week with an EU Government developing a full cloud services suite and planning to build their own new data centre, this will be "state of the art" and hopefully will adopt many of the EURECA project standards and specifications, we'll keep you posted on that project.
Due to this project and the fact that it is just at the start up and specification stage, we have applied for and been granted an extension to the project, so wheras the original project was 30 month duration and due to end in September 2017, it has now been extended to February 2018.

As a result of this extension we are still available for work on pilot projects, please let us know if you would like some free consultancy (terms and conditioins apply). On that note, we are still discussing a possible pilot with another EU government but they are currently in purdah (which should provide a clue as to who it is!) Again we'll keep you updated.

Our midlands datacentre standards project has been delayed due to various issues, but we have meetings with the principles next week and hope to be able to start our work before the end of May.
The delay has in fact been fairly productive as we have been given the opportunity to design the second phase of the proposed "National Data Centre Academy" and we've been hard at work talking to various organsiations about what they need for specific training courses and inviting them to view site (if you'd like to visit, please drop us an email on info@nationaldcacademy.com and we'll ping you back some dates)

On NDCA matters, we will be exhibting at edie.live next week (23/24th May 2017) at the NEC in Birmingham with our partners the Data Centre Alliance and IDC Achill Rock (our landlord) we'll be on stand N36 and you can use the following link to get your free tickets edie.live tickets

The NDCA project is essentially a step change in the delivery of data centre training, we'll have the usual classroom environment, but we're adding special rooms to deliver practical skills including something very special, I'm going to keep that under my hat for now as we have our partner coming to see the site and demostrate some kit next week, I can guarantee that this is a world first and potentially another real change to the way that we deliver certain types of training.

I completed 2 CEEDA assessments, one in Stockholm, Sweden and one in Sao Paolo, Brazil, and we have 3 scheduled for June, one in Ireland and 2 in Gibraltar, one of these is a reassessment and one is their new facility. We also have a number in the pipe for later this year, I'll keep you posted.

Our work with the DCA continues and we have been very busy 2 exciting new projects, of which more will be revealed by the DCA themselves, we wouldn't want to steal their thunder.
We'll be at the Datacentre Transformation Conference in Manchester on the 11th July, more information and registration can be found on this link I'll no doubt be speaking at the event and as always the DCA will be holding a mini event the day before in the afternoon, followed by networking drinks in a local hostelry. Once the details for the event are finalised I'll let you all know.

We attended the DCS awards last week, congratulations to all the organisations and people that won awards. Its always good to go to these events to catch up with colleagues in the industry, its a shame that sometimes its the only time you see them but thats life!

So, our main events over the next few months are as follows:

23/24th May edie.live
6-8th June Data Cloud Congress, Monaco
19-23rd June European Sustainable Energy Week, Brussels TBC
10th July DCA Update, UoM, Manchester
11th July Data Centre Transformation Conference, UoM,  Manchester
17th - 21st EURECA Training Week, NDCA Birmingham





Advanced Warning, a date for your diaries, the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres best practices committee has been provisionally scheduled for the 27th September in Ispra [more details once the meeting has been scheduled]

Until next time...