I won't go into a long dissertation, but I would like to hear what the masses are thinking about Green or Efficient efforts for the Data Center landscape.
As you all know Green is taking off -- our world is becoming concerned with the legacy we'll leave for our children and their children. I admire that because it identifies how we're a caring nation in the U.S. as well as a compassionate world.
But I believe we're mixing the messages down at the lower levels; In my opinion, "Green" means giving something back to mother earth. It means offsetting your carbon impact by planting trees (as I learned from one of the earlier companies I worked for ), or it means buying energy from alternative means such as wind power -- the direction Intel and other companies are moving towards. Those are green efforts from my point of view. However "Efficiency," is defined by Encarta's North America dictionary as this.. "The ability to do something well or achieve a desired result without wasted energy or effort."
So, what does everyone else thing about Green vs. Efficient?
Share your opinion
There is logic in the distiguish between 'Green' and Efficient' regarding data centers, but I still think that they have a certain 'relationship' and the term 'green' may still be used.
In order to make it clearer and not further confuse people, I suggest we bring in another term, which is 'Environmently-friendly'.
As I see it, this term is a comparable one.
What it means is that if a data center is designed to consume less power (by better airflow design, using servers with the newest energy-efficient CPUs etc..) and we utilize the generated heat from the data center to heat the building in the winter, this data center is 'enviroment-friendly'. Is it also 'green'? Again, I think that if you look at it compared to other data centers, you may refer to it as 'green'.
I believe that some industry forums are now in the process of defining specs for a 'Green Data Center', so we will probably hear more on this in the near future.