Bob Cassiliano, chairperson of the 7x24Exchange announcing new record attendance at the organizations Spring event, more than 600 attendees as of the first day. Based on history, last-minute registrations will further boost that number.

The morning keynote was delivered by Gary Howard, a senior solutions architect at Intel, who used Intel’s recent data center consolidation effort as a springboard for looking at a wide range of technologies available for the modern data center. The talk generated an unusual number of questions, notably from The Uptime Institute’s Ken Brill and Syska Hennessy’s Christopher Johnston, about technologies and adoption rates.

Howard yielded the stage for a dynamic panel discussion of green energy issues. Michael Zatz of the U.S. EPA led the discussion, which also featured Jack Pouchet of The Green Grid and Emerson Network Power, David Anderson of IBM, Mark Bramfitt of PG&E, and Ken Baker of HP.

The group began by debating what green really is, with Jack Pouchet noting that data centers are never really green.