EPA Releases Draft 3 Server Spec for Review
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released the third draft of its Energy Star specification for computer servers for review. The latest proposal reflects comments made on the Draft 2 specification and data submitted by manufacturers to EPA over the last two months. Also available is the latest version of the Power and Performance Data Sheet, referenced in Section 3.C of the Draft 3 document.
Interested parties are encouraged to submit comments on the Draft 3 specification and Power and Performance Data Sheet to Rebecca Duff , ICF International no later than December 3, 2008.
Stakeholders interested in reviewing the data used to derive proposed Draft 3 power supply and Idle requirements can download masked datasets from the Energy Star enterprise server specification development web site.
 
CFRT Peer Review Workshop
The Critical Facilities Roundtable (CFRT) is hosting a peer review workshop at Broadcom Corporation in San Jose, CA, on November 20. The session will include no vendor sponsors or presentations. The goals of the session are:
•   Learn about Data Center Management Tools Developed by Your Peers
•   Offer Your Opinions and Discuss Your Experiences with Management Methods and Tools
Broadcom has a number of internally developed data center management tools that it will share. The Broadcom tools were created to track various computing facility resources, daily IT equipment commissioning and decommissioning processes, capacity planning and potential system deployment forecasts. There is absolutely no cost for participation. Broadcom is interested in collaborating with professionals that manage large enterprise data center environments. 

Clouds Demand Capacity Plans, Says Survey
Neptuny, a provider of IT Optimization solutions, announced that a poll carried out at the Gartner Data Center Summit in Amsterdam found that 93 percent of companies are interested in implementing capacity management for cloud computing or virtualization.
Neptuny's Business Development Manager, Giuseppe Nardiello said, "Capacity management tools are recognized as essential for enabling IT managers to rationalize, consolidate and plan IT infrastructures while keeping the business going and adhering to SLAs. At both the Gartner Symposium/ITexpo in Orlando, FL, and the Gartner Data Center Summit in Amsterdam in October, many analysts urged the attendees to adopt such tools to better manage their data centers." One of the main reasons for this growing interest in Capacity Management is the adoption of the Cloud Computing paradigm in order to reduce costs in enterprise infrastructures, hardware and IT operations and to cope with the increasingly dynamic nature of IT environments and business needs. Capacity management is also recognized as a key factor for enabling "Green IT" initiatives. 

Google Puts OK Site On Hold
The Tulsa World's Robert Evatt reported that Google Inc . will delay activation of its server farm under construction at Mid-America Industrial Park in Pryor, OK. The paper's October 30th edition said the delay would last by at least a year. The move by Google means its first server farm won't go online until 2010 at the earliest, said Sanders Mitchell, administrator of the park. "The building is still under construction, but they're delaying the startup until the economy improves," he said. Google purchased 800 acres at the park last year to expand the infrastructure for its growing array of online services, such as Internet searches and e-mail.

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