Representatives from Google, Dupont Fabros Technology, Amazon, Nokia and Microsoft are protesting a building standard as being too prescriptive about what types of cooling methods can be used in data centers.
Data centers are one place where real information technology meets real building construction, regulations and brick and mortar. As a result, standards you’d never pay attention to can have a big impact on IT costs.
Enter the complaints from Google, Amazon and the gang of tech giants.
Google mapped out the data center groups concerns in a blog post. In a nutshell, the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) added data centers to their building efficiency standard, ASHRAE Standard 90.1. These standards wind up in building codes.
The problem: The group of data center operators say that their operations have become more efficient, but can do more. The money paragraph from Google’s missive:
We believe that for data centers, where the energy used to perform a function (e.g., cooling) is easily measured, efficiency standards should be performance-based, not prescriptive. In other words, the standard should set the required efficiency without prescribing the specific technologies to accomplish that goal. That’s how many efficiency standards work; for example, fuel efficiency standards for cars specify how much gas a car can consume per mile of driving but not what engine to use. A performance-based standard for data centers can achieve the desired energy saving results while still enabling our industry to innovate and find new ways to improve our products.
The problem: The ASHRAE is too prescriptive and dictates what type of cooling methods can be used. Data centers should be free to find new cooling methods that work better.
Data centers energy consumption seems to be an area ripe for debate. Indeed, Greenpeace recently took aim at data center energy consumption.
