CASE STUDY QUESTIONS

1. What business and social problems does data center power consumption cause?

Excessive power consumption uses vast amount of electricity that must be generated through hydroelectric plants or coal-fired power plants. While hydroelectric generation plants are less stressful on the environment than coal-fired, nevertheless, they do pull resources from more useful purposes. Coal-fired power plants generate huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere which some scientists and politicians claim is a major cause of global warming. Social implications of increased power consumption point to global warming.

2. What solutions are available for these problems? Which are the most environment-friendly?

Some of the solutions to cut power consumption discussed in the case study are a good beginning. Building data centers that take advantage of hydroelectric power generation rather than coal-fired power plants; renewable energy projects; alternative energy; employee telecommuting; thin client computers, software that automatically turns computers off; more efficient chips. Perhaps the most environment-friendly solutions are those that control the hardware and software, thereby controlling the problem at its source. Virtualization holds great promise as a way to reduce power requirements by reducing the number of servers required to run applications.

3. What are the business benefits and costs of these solutions?

Even though it may cost a business up-front money to install hardware and software that reduces power requirements, it will save a business a lot of money in the long run by reducing the amount it pays for electricity to run the equipment and cool it at the same time. Businesses that reduce their power needs help the environment and can promote themselves as environment-friendly.

4. Should all