Redmond Ridge 1 is opening soon as the server lab for most of Microsoft, consolidating the existing labs that exist all around the campus. The plan is that once this building is full, it will house 35,000 servers in a series of self-contained pods that will greatly reduce the power impact to the company.

It's cool that Microsoft is looking to be more efficient in their server farms, though I'm sure it's mostly a financial decision. 35,000 servers running must consume some serious power, and along with the extra cooling load in various buildings, I'm sure that adds up to a decent line item in the facilities budget.

There's a write-up at the Environmental Sustainability blog that talks about the carbon savings of the new facility, a lot of which come from better building design. The Redmond area has a good climate for simplifying cooling, but it takes someone thinking about a better way to do things. Instead of massive cooling units or chillers, there are individual air handlers for each unit, along with separate UPS's. The idea of each small rack handling it's own power, air, etc. might seem less efficient, but I wonder if that's true.

I think it's cool that Microsoft has an Environmental Sustainability Blog in the first place. I'm sure it's a minority of people that are concerned more about the environment than financials, but they're being heard, and they're given a voice to show better ways to build computing infrastructures that can have less impact on our planet.

I love out digital world, and I wouldn't want to give up the computer infrastructures we have, but I also recognize that we are started to consume an ever growing percentage of the power generated in the world. We need to be sure that we continue to find ways to minimize that impact, and it's great that the large software companies, like Microsoft, IBM, and Google, are doing research into better ways of "going green."

Steve Jones

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