While this is the 50^th anniversary of Earth Day, it is only the second annual International Data Center Day. So, how do we reconcile the Earth Day goals to mitigate climate change and pollution with the general perception that massive data centers are consuming terawatt hours of energy and creating a negative evironmental impact?

In recent years, the IoT, ever-escalating data requirements, and ongoing cloud adoption have contributed to a shift away from traditional, enterprise data center facilities. Instead, many organizations are adopting new approaches — all of which afford numerous benefits but, at the same time, create critical challenges.

For the latest installment of the State of the Mission Critical Industry series, we sat down with Chris Crosby, CEO of Compass Datacenters.

Within a short time frame, hyperscale data centers have gone from being designed with a typical wholesale data center layout to industrial-level design.

In several of my past columns, I have discussed liquid cooling. It would appear my articles over the past five years have had their effect, since lately it seems like almost everyone is offering some form of liquid cooling system.

Although September — National Disaster Preparedness month — is behind us, there’s no better time to focus on the continued, growing demand for decentralized energy services that don’t rely on the traditional power grid.

The next time you look to your smartphone to recall the name of that actress who co-starred in that movie with the guy from that television series, consider a study which estimated that a typical internet search engine uses as much energy as illuminating a 60-W lightbulb for 17 seconds while emitting 0.2 grams of CO₂.