Study: Two-Thirds of Data Centers Face Critical Power Shortages

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Going green with a data center is no longer merely good public relations, or just a money-saving project. It's about to become imperative for a corporation's survival. That's the inescapable conclusion, when you consider a recent study that discovered that unless data centers figure out a solution to their energy problems, nearly two-thirds of them will run out of power capacity by 2011.

The survey, from the Emerson Network Power, found that 64% of respondents said their data centers were faced with running out of power capacity by 2011, according to InfoWorld.

In addition, 36% of those surveyed said that the main reason they couldn't add additional computing capacity is a lack of power.

A big culprit is the increasing density per rack. Blade servers, switches and other rack-based equipment adds to the problem. So does putting more and more virtualized servers in smaller spaces. Another contributing factor: consolidating multiple data centers in centralized mega-data centers. This dramatically increases electricity and cooling requirements.

The survey results also show that unfortunately, many data center operators simply haven't caught on that one answer to their problems is to go green. It found that 47% of respondents will renovate or expand their data center in the next several years, 38% will build new data centers, and 30% will consolidate multiple datacenters.

However, less than 25% have a strategy to reduce energy use. That will inevitably change. Energy prices have increased so dramatically, enterprises will be forced to green their data centers. And if any kind of carbon tax becomes a reality, data center costs may increase even more.