As major businesses feel a growing sense of urgency to dramatically cut carbon emissions, opinions are starting to shift in favor of nuclear power, which is not classed as clean, but is a near-zero carbon energy source. The digital infrastructure…
In this report, Uptime Institute Intelligence looks beyond the obvious trends for 2022 and identifies some potentially challenging issues. These include sustainability reporting, supply chain problems and cloud concentration risk.
The findings of this survey suggest that data center operators are attentive to the growing risks from climate change and extreme weather events.
The data center and IT industry is a relatively minor — but nevertheless significant — contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. The issue of wasteful digital infrastructure energy consumption is now high on many corporate agendas and is prompting…
Air cooling dominates the modern data center, and in defiance of forecasts, direct liquid cooling (DLC) remains a niche technology. If DLC overcomes barriers to adoption, when can we expect it to overtake air cooling?
As the data center sector increases its focus on becoming more environmentally sustainable, regulators still have a part to play — the question is to what extent? In a recent Uptime Institute survey of nearly 400 data center operators and suppliers…
In the 2020 Uptime Institute Intelligence report The gathering storm: Climate change and data center resiliency, the author noted that, “While sustainability… features heavily in the marketing of many operators, the threat of extreme weather to…
The power usage effectiveness (PUE) metric is predominant thanks to its universal applicability and its simplicity: energy used by the entire data center, divided by energy used by the IT equipment. However, its simplicity could limit its future…
The survey finds spending on data centers is growing; forecasting capacity is the largest operator challenge; and the use of lithium-ion batteries and other technologies is more common.
The COVID-19 pandemic stressed the supply chain for data center equipment and construction. Many expect shortages to persist, driven by the ongoing pandemic and additional challenges.
Photovoltaic (PV) solar — which has become the lowest-cost form of energy in most major countries, according to the International Energy Agency — is set to play an increasing role in limiting the environmental footprint of edge data centers.
Earlier in 2021, ASHRAE’s Technical Committee 9.9 published an update — the fifth edition — of its Thermal Guidelines for Data Processing Environments. The update recommends important changes to data center thermal operating envelopes: the presence…
Uptime Institute’s annual survey, now in its eleventh year, is the most comprehensive, longest-running study of its kind in the data center sector.
Power purchase agreements (PPAs) are often a preferred method for data center operators to procure renewable electricity, but their fixed purchase price and duration (eight to 20 years) can pose significant financial and power management risks.
Until recently, power purchase agreements (PPAs) and unbundled renewable energy certificates (RECs) were the primary means for data center operators or managers to procure renewable electricity and RECs for their operations. Many companies are not…