Microsoft Unfriends Coal

As the entire facebook community and environment activists and organizations like Greenpeace are urging social networking giant Facebook to use  renewable energy sources to run their mega data centers by the 22th April 2011 to spread a "Go Green" message on this  Earth Day , the major software house Microsoft has already decided to its Dublin data centers through  wind power.This could be one of the great initiatives to keep the planet green and sustainable and of course has set an example for others.

Enhancing its efforts in the environment-sustainability mission Microsoft has contracted a local renewable energy provider to buy the wind power in order to its Dublin data centers.The company’s general manager of data center services Kevin wrote in a  post that “Our approach to environmental sustainability in Dublin is just one more example of our overall holistic approach to designing and building data centers around the world,” he wrote. “Our strategy focuses on innovating locally and designing facilities that take advantage of the region’s natural environmental benefits where possible.”

Climate was a major reason Microsoft chose the Dublin location, where temperatures range between -5C and 27C. The upper end of the range also happens to be the current upper limit for inside air temperature in data centers specified by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers.

The 5.4MW data center uses free cooling nearly 100% of the time. Free cooling is supplemented by direct-expansion units on the roof when necessary.

In addition to saving on power consumption, chiller-less cooling also enables the facility to avoid going through about 18m liters of water every month. This is typical water consumption of a traditionally-designed data center of this size..

                                                        So cheers to MS..!!

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