Keywords: IT service centers, energy efficiency, CO2 emission, CO2 lifecycle, system management, industry.

As a complex system, the energy consumption (and, more importantly, the CO2 emission) of IT service centers is not simply defined by the power requirement of each electrical device. Many external/internal factors even though non determinative, also weigh on the total consumption. Besides for these influences, the interrelations among application level, IT infrastructure and facility are not negligible and even more intractable. However, this paper will only concentrate on improving the energy efficiency of IT service centers by presenting current techniques and methods on the physical level.

In fact, performances and capacities of IT devices are strongly driven by demand from the user side; with the increasing capabilities of modern systems, IT service centers have to be modernized periodically in order to maintain their competitiveness. For this reason, it is not sufficient to assess IT service centers only with respect to the CO2 emissions during operating, but also with respect to production, transportation, disposal etc. of the devices. These factors play an important role when considering the "device throughput" of modern day IT service centers. On the other hand, it is difficult, even impossible to address all relevant factors, yet it can be generalized that the impact on the total efficiency is less influenced with the growing "distance" of the industry in the development process (as they typically do not only serve one single IT service center). How to define the boundary condition is a crucial issue in this assessment. A rational boundary can simplify the analysis and maintain the main properties of the life cycle by removing other marginal factors. In this paper we will outline the factors and relationships of the global CO2 lifecycle and their impact on the effective efficiency of IT service centers in more detail, thus leading to a better assessment of the "environmental friendliness" of these environments.

1

Pacific Gas and Electric Company, "High Performance IT service centers- A design guidelines sourcebook", 2006. http://www.scribd.com/doc/11806979/High-Performance-Data-Centers-A-Design-Guidelines-Sourcebook

2

M. Stansberry, "Energy Efficiency IT - The 21st Century brings a shift in IT service center efficiency", The Green Grid, 2010.

3

J.M. Kaplan, W. Forrest, N. Kindler, "Revolutionizing IT service center energy efficiency", McKinsey & Company, July 2008. http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/bto/pointofview/pdf/Revolutionizing_Data_Center_Efficiency.pdf

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