Knowledge Library

In this webinar Digital Realty Trust presents the results of the 2009 “How Green is Green?” survey. This study was conducted in March of this year and examines the full suite of issues and questions that surround the Green movement within the data center industry. Among the topics that that will be examined in this webinar is the current state of green standards, the use of specialized hardware, and the potential for governmental regulation.

In this webinar Digital Realty Trust presents the results of the 2009 market demand survey. This study was conducted in January and February of 2009 and examines a variety of factors that characterize today’s data center market and highlights the reasons the demand for computing space remains high. Among the topics that will be included in this presentation are power requirements, expansion plans, and the forces that are driving the need for more data center capacity.

Digital Realty Trust's Senior Vice President of Sales and Technical Services, Chris Crosby, articulates alternatives available to you in designing and constructing your new datacenter facility. This webinar defines the tasks that are associated with acquiring, designing and constructing a datacenter facility and the issues associated with each of them. It addresses the degree of risk inherent in each of these options to help assist you in choosing the alternative that best addresses your corporate needs.

Digital Realty Trust's Senior Vice President of Sales and Technical Services, Chris Crosby, provides perspectives that incorporate aspects from financing and Total Cost of Ownership to the most efficient methodology to identify and obtain space under increasingly more stringent time constraints.

Digital Realty Trust's Senior Vice President of Sales and Technical Services, Chris Crosby, discusses the difficulties surrounding kW of IT load and chargeback systems.

Digital Realty Trust's Senior Vice President of Sales and Technical Services, Chris Crosby, shares insight into the four dynamic forces that exist in every data center.

Digital Realty Trust's Senior Vice President of Sales and Technical Services, Chris Crosby, discusses how the data centre is undergoing an industrialization in both the US and European markets.

Digital Realty Trust's Vice President of Engineering, Jim Smith, compares the 2008 results to the 2007 results of a market research study on the "green" data center movement.

Digital Realty Trust's Vice President - Europe, Bernard Geoghegan, discusses the results to a market demand research study conducted in Europe.

Digital Realty Trust's Vice President of Engineering, Jim Smith, discusses the nuances of efficient data center design.

Digital Realty Trust's Senior Vice President, Chris Crosby, discusses the inaccuracies of many commonly quoted data center "facts".

Digital Realty Trust's Vice President of Engineering Jim Smith discusses whether "Green Datacenters" are here to stay or just a passing fad.

Digital Realty Trust's Vice President of Engineering Jim Smith discusses the ins and outs of planning and designing a green data center.

Digital Realty Trust's SVP of Sales and Technical Services, Chris Crosby, discusses engineering methods you should employ when designing your data center.

By using a division of labor scheme that assigns responsibility for the acquisition, design, construction and operation of the facility to a partner, corporate IT staffs are better able to focus on the applications they support from a data center they know they can rely on. Based on its position as the industry’s leader in data center acquisition, design, construction and operation Digital Realty Trust stands as secure choice for those firms seeking a visionary partner to assist them in navigating this rapidly changing marketplace.

Digital Realty Trust is the largest acquirer, developer, owner and operator of data centers in the world. While some may argue that bigger is not always better, in the world of data centers, as you will see, size does matter in our ability to serve as your secure choice for your next data center facility. Digital Realty Trust's market position and financial strength enable us to deliver clear and tangible benefits that our competitors simply cannot deliver.

Digital Realty Trust provides perspectives that incorporate aspects from financing and Total Cost of Ownership to the most efficient methodology to identify and obtain space under increasingly more stringent time constraints.

Digital Realty Trust explores the use of kW of IT Load as the new chargeback mechanism for top IT executives.

Digital Realty Trust's Senior Vice President of Sales and Technical Services, Chris Crosby, shares insight into the four dynamic forces that exist in every data center.

Digital Realty Trust highlights the 2008 results — in comparison to the 2007 results — of a market research study on the "green" data center movement.

Until recently little focus was aimed at examining how effectively energy was used within data centers. As these costs were often buried within larger corporate or departmental bills, and generally reflected the cost of operating the resident IT equipment, they were viewed as just "the cost of doing business" and paid no undue attention.

With estimates of power requirements per rack projected to be as high as 53 kW many existing data centers are on an accelerated track toward obsolescence. As a result, today’s data center professionals are faced with the need to effectively remove heat from within the facility to ensure the maximum degree of operational uptime for their mission critical applications.

Different sources of information have cropped up offering help to CIO's and real estate and facilities executives concerning their needs for data center space. Through an onslaught of advice and guidance, "urban myths" continue to evolve and be passed along by pundits, vendors and well-meaning associates. As is common with mythology, data center myths often have a basis in fact but are erroneous. Without careful scrutiny, these "rules of thumb", or "expert guidelines", can lead to poor data center planning and decision making.

The "Green" movement has overwhelmed the national consciousness. No matter what the product or industry, companies are increasingly centering their messages on the societal benefit of being "green". The data center industry has also embraced this emerging paradigm. The overarching issue, however, is to what depth will this new eco-friendly movement actually influence both the data center industry and its consumers.

The need for data center space is booming. Due to the convergence of a diversity of factors including: synchronous applications growth, rising regulatory requirements, and enhanced storage demands, a high percentage of existing data centers can expand no further. The Gartner Group estimates that over 50% of existing data centers will be obsolete within the next five years. In order to ensure that your search for data center space ends with a facility that can support both your current and future requirements it is important to accurately determine your space and power requirements. All this seems like a simple endeavor, however if you are not correctly expressing your requirements you may wind up with a data center whose obsolescence begins shortly after your move-in date.

Due to a variety of factors, such as virtualization and enhanced processing power, data center growth continues almost unabatedly. Although these advances in technology continue to enable companies to place more servers within a rack and benefit from geometric increases in their processing capability one common thread still underscores every data center scenario — the need for power.

The recent momentum behind the "green movement" within the data center community interjects a new consideration into the design and planning process of data center facilities, but the challenges of making data centers greener also opens up opportunities to make these facilities better support a company's business goals.

How often does the end product of countless hours of planning and activity, not to mention financial commitment, fail to live up to expectations? Often, the product or operation is launched with great fanfare only to prove unable to perform its desired function on a consistent basis. In many instances, data centers follow this same course of initial promise followed by an unpredictable stream of service disruptions and system's failures.

Value engineering is typically used as a cost-reduction exercise within the data center industry. The typical execution of value engineering activities in most organizations is a systematic series of meetings in which design requirements are flogged unmercifully to wring out all "excess" cost. Then, once all interested parties agree that no more dollars can be shaken out, the search for a site begins. This round-peg-in-a-square-hole approach may please the finance department, but it typically results in the construction of a facility that does not possess the capabilities to adequately support existing requirements or future growth.

Jim Smith, Chief Technology Officer, discusses why Digital Realty Trust has embraced PUE, how it is metering its data centers and how it would like to see the metric develop at the DatacenterDynamics London Energy Efficiency Summit, April 2009.

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Jim Smith, Chief Technology Officer, discusses challenges that he sees in the data center industry in 2008, including IT deployment, capital planning and service and product adoption. The interview was conducted at a Datacenter Dynamics event where Jim presented his "Notes on the Field" regarding public data center efficiency data.

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