Eleven top tips for energy-efficient data center design and operation

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The use of data centers globally has skyrocketed in the past three to four years in response to growing demand for information storage and transfer from banks, hospitals, government bodies, telecom operators and hosting facilities. Data center power load (and therefore heat dissipation) foot-prints are continuing to rise, with greenhouse gas emissions from data centers expected to overtake airline industry emissions by 2020.^[1] Data centers already consume ~2 percent of total U.S. electricity, growing at ~12 percent compound annual growth (CAGR).^[2]

Cooling constitutes a major cost in the operation of a data center. This has led to an increased focus on minimizing energy use in data centers and enters, thereby reducing operating costs. A consistent design goal is to ensure that the power usage effectiveness (PUE) is kept as low as possible, namely, close to unity (for example, 1.0).

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