Data Centers

Is generative AI bad for the environment? A computer scientist explains the carbon footprint of ChatGPT and its cousins

As the carbon footprint of generative AI models continues to grow, one expert suggests leveraging renewable energy resources to keep up with user demands.

  • By Kate Saenko, The Conversation

How effective asset management supports data center sustainability

COMMENTARY | With proactive monitoring and asset management, agencies can drive down cooling costs while avoiding downtime risk.

  • By Dale Quayle

Va. regulators propose easing emission limits for data centers over power transmission concerns

Roughly 150 data centers in Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William could be impacted through end of July.

  • By Sarah Vogelsong and Charlie Paullin, Virginia Mercury

Communities are rethinking their push for data centers

More governments are looking into the environmental effects of data centers on neighborhoods.

  • By Susan Miller

Some workflows belong in the cloud, others don’t

New research shows that 88% of organizations have returned at least some data from the cloud to on-prem data centers.

  • By Chris Teale

Cold-War missile defense site heats up state’s data center economy, onsite gardens

After sitting unused for decades, the 300,000-square-foot, mostly underground building will be converted to a secure data center whose excess C02 and heat will support an indoor greenhouse.

  • By Stephanie Kanowitz

County puts ‘Band-Aids’ on power shortage pain

The electric utility serving Loudoun County, Virginia, cannot power new data centers until 2026, leaving the county looking for temporary solutions.

  • By Chris Teale

Prince William could steal Loudoun’s title of Data Center Alley. But land use battles are raging.

The possible development of data centers in Prince William County divides residents among those who support the potentially profitable project and those who wish to preserve the agricultural land.

  • By Nathaniel Cline, Virginia Mercury

Crunch data while the sun shines and save it in an 'information battery'

"Information batteries" can make better use of green energy by storing partially computed data for processing later, researchers at the University of Southern California's Viterbi School of Engineering suggest.

  • By Susan Miller

Containerization and virtualization in a hybrid world

Agencies are mixing physical servers, virtual machines and containers to get the required storage and computer resources they need to maximize performance.

  • By Dave McCarty

Eco-friendly data centers key to sustainable enterprises

Climate change – and the availability of water and renewable and locally generated energy -- is driving interest in carbon-neutral data centers.

  • By Stephanie Kanowitz

Don't get your wires (and cables) in a twist

PigTails offers a unique, clear way to label cords and cables.

  • By John Breeden II
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New York Times creates a dustup over data centers

An article that says the data centers at the foundation of Internet activity are environmentally damaging draws sharp criticism from others who cover the industry.

  • By GCN Staff

Could helium in hard drives make performance go 'Up?'

Western Digital plans to encase hard drives in helium to reduce drag, lower power consumption and increase performance.

  • By John Breeden II

Cloak, dagger and Google: 'Pluto' switch remains a mystery

A different kind of networking switch that turned up in Iowa has been returned to Google — with no questions answered.

  • By Greg Crowe

App breaks through the mobile compatibility wall

The Citrix Receiver app can keep agencies' mobile devices securely connected regardless of platforms.

  • By John Breeden II

Flash memory arrays built for large data stores, fast transfers

The Nimbus Gemini can handle 1 petabyte of weekly data writes without a loss of performance, along with 12 gigabits/sec transfer speeds and over 1 million input/output operations/sec.

  • By GCN Staff

Flash memory in government data centers? The pros and cons.

IBM's purchase of Texas Memory Systems raises the possibility that we'll be seeing flash in government data centers before too long. What are the advantages?

  • By John Breeden II

Smooth data-center move sets template for disaster recovery

Alaska’s Enterprise Technology Services team used a unified computing system to quickly move existing services to a new data center, and validated its disaster recovery approach and failover capabilities in the process.

  • By Rutrell Yasin

Dell's mobile data center: When you need an IT backbone overnight

Dell's launch of its Tactical Mobile Data Center will allow government, military and enterprise users to quickly deploy an additional, backup or remote IT backbone.

  • By GCN Staff

Storm cripples Amazon cloud, but do sites have to go down, too?

You can arrange to have other data centers back up your services when one goes down, but it'll cost you.

  • By Kevin McCaney