Intelligent Data Centres Issue 31 | Page 22

INDUSTRY INTELLIGENCE POWERED BY THE DCA
If we are going to drive change , we need to look at the whole ecosystem .
assets such as gold , silver and other metals . Aside from this , there are other production expenses that are impossible to recoup , such as the carbon cost of steel manufacture or the fresh water that has now been contaminated .
These issues are discussed a lot within the data centre , not least by the Interreg NW funded CEDaCI project , which includes many DCA members . In March , the project celebrated an additional € 1.245 million grant to chart a path towards Circular Economy in three additional countries . Encompassing every stage of the life cycle – from of repair , refurbishment and reuse of all electronic items .
Some might question how valid reuse is within the data centre environment . We all know that much of the equipment removed from high-end data centres is not yet at the end of life and can be used elsewhere .
Older equipment can be donated or sold to organisations with lower compute needs , such as schools and SMEs . However , we are now also waking up to the idea that equipment can be reconfigured and reused within high performance data centres too .
We recently published a paper in the IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Computing titled Optimizing server refresh cycles : The case for circular economy with an aging Moore ’ s Law . Co-authored by Techbuyer and the University of East London , it demonstrates that the immediate past generation can out-perform the latest on power consumption and Return on Investment ( RoI ). It also proves there is no difference between like for like new and refurbished servers and components . This goes some way to explaining the approach of some hyperscalers . Google happily and publicly states that 75 % of components in its spares programme and 52 % in its machine upgrades programme are refurbished components .
Pulling this apart for enterprise servers interested us and we used the research to build a Machine Learning tool delivered by a sister company called Interact . This analyses energy usage within a data centre and offers hardware suggestions to increase efficiency , decrease carbon usage and optimise costs . Since its launch in January , it is finding that many of the best solutions for energy use over time are refurbished , immediate past generation machines .
Astrid Wynne , Techbuyer Sustainability Lead
circular design to optimised CRM recovery – the partnership of academics and industry experts agrees that reuse and refurbishment is the best value proposition for current IT hardware . It will also buy time to optimise design and material recovery .
This comes as the world wakes up to the problem of electronic waste and takes steps to address it . With Joe Biden backing the Right to Repair movement in the USA and similar legislation promised in the UK , the mainstream press is full of stories on the environmental and social benefits
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