Sun touts energy-efficient data centre drive

Sun has become the latest company to play the energy-efficiency card for its data-centre technology. The company claims it is the first to offer practical and free solutions that customers can implement immediately.

Richard Barrington, Sun's head of public policy in the UK, said: "Other companies are talking about offering solutions aimed at helping with climate issues but we are offering practical solutions and help that companies can implement now."

Sun said it has cut the number of racks of its own servers from 95 to five, which it said had reduced its carbon footprint by one per cent.

Barrington said: "That is real savings in the use of power and energy. It is all very well to talk about 'offsetting' and the like but the real savings are what counts."

Barrington said Sun is acting, unlike other companies such as IBM that "are just talking about it". The company has undertaken considerable research into this area, according to Barrington, and has generated a considerable amount of data on its own experience in reducing carbon emissions. "This will all be available for use by other companies," he said.

Barrington added that for every degree less of heat that data-centre equipment generates, typically four per cent is saved on cooling costs.

The latest Sun data centre that epitomises the company's aim for lower emissions is Sun's facility at Blackwater in Hampshire, which will join two other facilities in Bangalore, India, and Santa Clara, California. The three facilities form the backbone of Sun's worldwide IT strategy.

The UK site will consolidate multiple European data centres into a single facility, the company said, with an 80 per cent reduction in server and storage space.

Sun's initiative goes back to November 2005 when Sun's IT Operations group faced lease expirations that made the company decide to bring together multiple European data centres into one facility in the UK.

To accomplish the consolidation, Sun moved applications off 100 older Sun servers (Sun E4500, E6500 and others) with larger power and space footprints to 80 Sun Fire v240, v440 and v490 servers.

Colin Barker writes for ZDNet UK