Template:SUN UK Aug-07

From Lauraibm

Full article: Sun Goes Green in its Data Centre (21-Aug-07)

Sun has consolidated its multiple European data centres into a single UK facility as part of the firm's bid to reduce its environmental impact. The UK datacentre – located in Blackwater – consolidates multiple European datacentres from Norway, Prague and Holland into single facility. Sun said this has reduced server and storage space by 80%. And by changing the design of the datacentres, the vendor has reduced the number of racks from 95 to 5, which impacts on the square footage required. The vendor already claims to have slashed its energy consumption by a third this year. The head of public policy for Sun UK, said the vendor has also managed to resell, reuse or recycle the servers it has taken from its datacentre.

He said Sun also used in-the-rack cooling, rather than floor cooling, and runs it datacenter warmer than average: "By using in-the-rack cooling, instead of floor cooling, we can run different parts of the datacentre at different speeds, depending on how mission critical the application is. We run our datacenters at 72 degrees Fahrenheit. Most organisations run datacentres at 68 degrees Fahernheit. For every degree warmer we run the data centre, that's 4% of our cooling budget saved, as well as being better from an environmental perspective."

By "getting our house in order" Barrington said Sun has also launched a set of "green service offerings" for its customers. UK customers that are already using this sustainable technology model include Betfair, United Utilities and Centrepoint.