Greg Schulz has delivered with both a timely and informative book. With the economic meltdown occurring in 2008 every company has become focused on cost containment both for Cap Ex and Op Ex and the data center is in forefront. This is taking place at the same time as heighten awareness of our planets ecology and the impact of IT and data centers. As Schulz states in his summary chapter: "The objective is to lower cost, boost productivity, and improve service delivery to meet performance and availability objectives in a flexible or agile manner that also helps the environment."
In the first chapter Schulz coins the acronym PCFE for power, cooling, floor space and environmental to aggregate the IT infrastructure issues that are core to green initiatives. As I read through the book I substituted PC Fe for Politically Correct Iron because in my mind it reflects what Schulz calls the "green gap". This "green gap" is the separation of ecological and economic factors that are tied to the data center. On one hand we have the concerns about global warming, green-house gases, and carbon emissions while on the other we have data growth, power and cooling cost, stock holders looking for profits and the perceived cost to be green. The case is presented that this gap is more one of language and attitude as opposed to reality. If IT directors and facility managers implement best practices to design and run their data centers they will find in most cases they align with green objectives because it makes business sense.
The book is divided into four sections. In the first section there is a summary of the issues facing CIOs and IT directors around energy consumption, safety requirements for the disposal or equipment, and what green IT means. The second section looks at current trends in data center infrastructure and how they can be effectively monitored and managed. The third examines the technologies which are enabling virtualization and driving current trends like cloud computing. This is Mr. Schulz's area of core competency and has the most in depth coverage. In the final portion of the book there are practical applications of the concepts discussed in the other sections. I found the format to be a good organization that kept key areas together and the overall coverage of the topics to be of sufficient depth. I would recommend this book to anyone wants to understand the impact of "green IT" as well how the convergence of a number of technologies has created potential for virtual IT infrastructure.
About the reviewer
Paul Collins is CTO for Total Tec Systems a leading enterprise solution provider for data center infrastructure, and server and storage virtualization. He has a 20 year history of helping customers design, implement and manage IT infrastructure. Total Tec Systems is headquartered in Edison, NJ.
