It’s the gold standard to which companies aspire: highly efficient, reliable data centers fueled by green energy. Built in high-desert climates and driven by wind, water, or solar power, these infrastructures offer significantly lower costs and greater operational efficiency — all while meeting stringent industry standards for sustainability. And while it sounds great on paper, these infrastructures are far from the industry norm.
The statistics aren’t up for debate: The National Resource Defense Council (NRDC) reports US data centers consume more than 90 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity. Putting this number into perspective, this equates to the energy required to power every household in New York City — TWICE!
Unfortunately, effective use of renewable energy isn’t quite as prevalent as it should be. The fact is the majority of data center energy is used by smaller corporate infrastructures and multi-tenant sites providing colocation services. And as the NRDC notes: "Small, medium, and corporate data centers are responsible for the vast majority of data center energy consumption and are generally much less efficient."
CenturyLink is doing its part to offer sustainable data center options and to ensure the broader industry can capitalize on the cost and efficiency of renewable energy. Our Moses Lake, Washington, (CW1) data center is designed to make sustainability more attainable for everyone — from the single cabinet buyer to those requiring a full-service data center solution. Built in conjunction with Server Farm, a data center company whose mission is to maximize data center and IT infrastructure efficiencies, the site delivers broad-based retail colocation with the highest percentage use of hydroelectric power in the US.
Combining smaller power costs with the low-PUE cooling solution means we can deliver 100% power uptime SLAs at a highly competitive price — without sacrificing quality. Beyond the numbers, teams worked together to construct an efficient shared staffing model to easily adapt to potential and anticipated growth.
The success of this now means a broader range of global enterprises have access to our premier Hybrid IT portfolio. Opening up new possibilities via much lower power costs, the high resiliency and geographic location make the Moses Lake facility ideal for more customers to access our broad suite of Cloud, colocation, and managed services offerings.
With a seismic rating of 2B — by far the lowest rating in the US — the location is also a top choice for customers opting to leverage our reliable disaster recovery solutions.
It’s taken some time, but green energy is finally translating to the broader global data center market. That’s significant, considering there’s more pressure than ever before to capitalize on the promised efficiency, reliability, and sustainability. With CenturyLink and Server Farm, customers can now realize the promise of green IT — today.
For more information about this article, please visit the EpiCenter blog at: http://www.centurylink.com/business/enterprise/blog/epicenter/data-center-centurylink-server-farm-fulfilling-the-promise-of-green-it/.
