Making the data centre greener

We at Noisy Cloud are as green as we can be. We're big on recycling and even more on efficiency. This is why we're really pleased to see big companies taking steps like the one Facebook has just made:

https://www.facebook.com/notes/lule%25C3%25A5-data-center/lule%25C3%25A5-goes-live/474321655969861

Data centres are obviously critical in the cloud computing world, but do we need to worry about the resources consumed? Well data centres are increasingly becoming a vital part of our daily lives, although the average consumer isn't aware of their roll. All that processing power in one place obviously consumes a lot of electricity and generates a lot of heat. So locating the data centre somewhere like Sweden makes a lot of sense as it allows the environment to naturally cool the building down. Facebook are even going so far as to invest in efficient systems and hydro-electricity. Well done Facebook this is excellent work.

Can the rest of us take anything from this approach? Well it might be hard to justify an AWS data centre or a  CDN endpoint in Northern Sweden, but we can easily learn from their efficiency example? Could those instances be powered down during peak periods? Perhaps.....

Anyway, an interesting thought for the day.