energy efficiency

I didn’t quite appreciate it, however over the years, I’ve become a data center geek!  My job doesn’t involved working daily in a data center, but when I do get to visit one, I find the facilities and energy design principles and practices employed absolutely fascinating! I jumped, then, when I had…

The University of British Columbia is making buildings smarter with green initiatives. UBC transformed their building network to obtain highly granular, digital insights into traffic patterns. Using these data analytics, they improved operational efficiencies, resulting in 33 percent lower gas emiss…

Last week I introduced this topic, the pervasive problem of “comatose” servers in data centers, based upon an interesting recent eWeek article entitled “30 Percent of Servers Worldwide Sit Idle”, which in turn was based upon the research report by Stanford University in conjunction with the Anthesis…

In my role in Cisco Services, I’m more interested in the challenges of technology adoption and deployment than I am in speeds and feeds, statistics and technology fads.  I actively seek out case studies where technology goes wrong – admittedly most of these examples turn out to be issues around intr…

When most people think about sustainability at a company like Cisco, they envision solar arrays and smart cities – and we certainly have those! But humming quietly on the roof of every building is a significant energy consumer, the air conditioning.  So just as we innovate solutions for the Internet…

Cisco’s EnergyOps team is tasked with reducing energy consumption and increasing energy efficiency at our offices, labs, and data centers worldwide. Cisco’s labs are our largest consumer of energy and although we are putting a lot of effort into improving the efficiency of those environments, we’re…

If sibling rivalry exists among Data Centers, our Richardson, Texas facility must be jealous.  Unveiled in 2007 as Cisco’s next-generation Data Center and subsequently toured by thousands of visitors, the site hasn’t received much attention since its younger brother came online in 2011.…

Two things I greatly enjoy about working in and around Data Centers are that so many different technologies converge within them and that those technologies are constantly evolving.  There’s always something new to explore. It’s no surprise then that Data Center Deconstructed ping-ponged among sever…