SUSTAINABILITY
Capacity , computing power , and efficiency have all increased farther and faster than anyone could have expected - allowing the industry to , for a few brief years , at least , match both the need for more ( more , more , more !) capacity while flattening operational carbon emissions . Data centres , at least from this operational perspective , work at a level of efficiency that is nothing short of miraculous .
However , this progress , innovation , and growth has a hidden cost .
“ With the increasing shift to the cloud , hyperscale and third party hosting / colocation data centres , the IT equipment upgrade cycles are shortening to perhaps every two or three years , and certainly no more than five years ,” says Andrew Gomarsall , MBE , the Executive Chairman of N2S .
With an unprecedented appetite for capacity , especially in the growing
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I R C U L A R make
recycle
E C O N O M Y use
N2S bio chemist in lab
hyperscale portion of the industry , upgrade cycles are getting shorter as new technology is used to boost efficiency . However , as innovations ( ironically often aimed at reducing the operating emissions of data centres ) accelerate rapidly , “ IT consumption volumes are accelerating enormously while the typical hardware life cycles are shortening due to this incredible acceleration in innovations ,” he explains , noting that “ While the data centre industry in general is clearly making huge strides in the race to net zero - through energy efficiency and other areas of sustainability , such as the use of 100 % renewable power , on-site generation of solar and wind energy , more efficient servers , and cooling - there is still much more to be done to optimise the lifecycle of hardware .”
In short , despite messaging to the contrary , “ We are still continuing to bend a linear model ,” Gomarsall reflects .
64 April 2022