The use of the information and communications technologies (ICT), comprising communication devices and/or applications, Data Centres, Internet infrastructure, mobile devices, computer and network hardware and software and so on, has increased rapidly. Internet service providers such as Amazon, Google, Yahoo, etc., representing the largest stakeholders in the IT sector, constructed a large number of geographically distributed internet data centers (IDCs) to satisfy the growing demands and providing reliable low latency services to customers. These IDCs have a large number of servers, large-scale storage units, networking equipment, infrastructure, etc., to distribute power and provide cooling. The number of IDCs owned by the leading IT companies is drastically increasing every year. Due to large amount of energy implied and the related cost, IDCs can make a significant contribution to the energy efficiency by reducing energy consumption and power management of IT ecosystems. It was reported that IDCs consume 100 times more energy than conventional office buildings.
The GREENDC project contributes to greener data centres by developing a decision support system (DSS) that helps data centre managers predict energy demands better and evaluate strategies to minimize energy waste and CO2 emissions. The GREENDC DSS monitor the energy use of IDCs and propose dynamic cooling strategies to save energy consumption. GREENDC is implemented through knowledge exchange between two academic partners and two industrial partners. Academic partners transfer knowledge on energy forecasting and optimal operation strategies to industrial partners while industrial partners transfer their knowledge on data centre operations through secondment activities.
