Consonus Takes Green Data Centers to the Next Level -- Energy Efficiency in the Data Center

PRLog (Press Release) – Nov 04, 2009 – CARY, NORTH CAROLINA -- Consonus Technologies has announced the launch of several green data centers to lighten the company's impact on natural resources. To effect innovation and demonstrate leadership in the “green data center” space, Consonus has intensified its efforts, including joining industry associations to effect global, local, strategic, and tactical opportunities for change.

Consonus offers virtual data centers with a 24 hour, seven day a week, 365 days a year system monitoring, data storage, and backup that prevents data loss against natural disaster, power outages, and physical and network attacks. Because of the round-the-clock service that data centers provide, they are traditionally among the largest users of power nationally (estimates range from 2% to 8% of total power used, and growing), and often pass significant and continuously increasing power costs onto customers.  But Consonus has found ways to buck the trend of overuse and has found these numerous ways to go green while passing the savings along to clients.

Consonus has sought out the most energy efficient solutions to power and cool data center virtualization centers and found eco-organizations for solutions and to share the company's innovations in green technology. The company is a member of The Green Grid, a global consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems. The Green Grid seeks to provide industry-wide recommendations on best practices, metrics and technologies that will improve overall data center and business computing energy efficiencies.

The company also holds a "Visionary" level membership in Rocky Mountain Power’s Blue Sky Program. Rocky Mountain Power’s Blue Sky program provides customers with an easy way to support regional wind energy, and to help encourage the development of small, community-based renewable energy projects in the company’s service area, such as solar power.

"By joining The Green Grid and Rocky Mountain Power's Blue Sky Program, Consonus is helping influence both developers and end users of data center technology. We've also made a concentrated effort to find the most efficient and sustainable technology and design for our Data Centers around the country and pass that knowledge on to other companies in our community," says Bob McCarthy, Co-President of Consonus.

Consonus (http://www.consonus.com) has also found ways to minimize the carbon footprint in each of its data centers around the country by using efficient technology in high-efficiency electrical and cooling using the following solutions:

•   Closed Loop cooling systems and clean chilled water cooled versus DX-type systems.

•   Implementation of solutions for hot aisle/cold aisle management to more efficiently utilize the power used to run the air handlers (CRAC units) in Consonus data centers.

•   Chimneys to better, more efficiently capture return air for cooling.

•   Additional physical structures to better contain the hot and cold air in its specified aisle.
•   Consonus uses computational fluid dynamic (CFD) modeling to better understand data center airflow.  The physical configuration of data center equipment is based on these airflow and thermal analyses for maximum efficiency.

•   At the Consonus West Data Center (in the Salt Lake City area), unique, Consonus-developed swamp cooling systems installed on rooftop units have improved energy efficiency by over 25%.

•   Efficient Lighting is used throughout Consonus facilities. F32T8 Fluorescent Light Bulbs are some of the most energy-efficient bulbs available, which helps reduce our monthly power cost.