Green Grid preps Data Centre Design Guide

The Green Grid consortium is putting the final touches to a new Datacentre Design Guide, which will aim to bring together the plethora of advice on how to curb energy use in firm's server farms and provide a comprehensive overview of environmental best practices for datacentre managers.

The group of global IT firms, which is committed to improving the energy efficiency of datacentres through the development of new technologies and best practices, is set to launch the new guide in February next year, at which point it will be made freely available through the group's website.

Speaking to BusinessGreen.com, Green Grid chairman John Tuccillo said that the new guide would make it easier for datacentre managers to navigate the huge amount of energy-saving advice now available.

"The Green Grid covers all the constituencies that make up a datacentre and we have provided a lot of guidance on how to improve cooling, design layout, power usage and building management to save energy," he said. "But this guide will aim to bring together those different areas and also establish the protocols that allow all the different best practices to work together."

He added that the guide would serve as a "living document" and would be repeatedly updated to keep track of new energy-efficiency technologies and approaches.

The announcement of the new guide follows a flurry of activity from the group – which in the past few weeks has seen it release a new online tool to help datacentres in Europe assess their suitability for energy-saving free air-cooling systems – publish a guide on the imminent regulations that will impact datacentre managers in the UK, France, Germany and the Netherlands, and ink an alliance with UK IT trade association the BCS.

Tuccillo said that the new partnership with the BCS would help the two organisations avoid overlap in their work on green datacentres and also allow them to work together in the development of new training courses to help IT managers improve their energy efficiency.

"We can work together on some of the training the BCS provides around the EU Code of Conduct [for green datacentres] and the training we offer through the Green Grid Academy, and we plan to co-operate closely to develop new courses," he said.