A Third of Data Centers in the Dark on Power

Thirty six percent of data center managers say they don't know whether their electric bills increased between 2007 and 2008, suggesting that a large chunk of the industry continues to operate their facilities without effective communication aboutpower costs. That's one of the findings from a survey of 600 facilities managers by Data Center Decisions, which is summarized at Tech Target.

The survey shows strong adoption of energy effiency strategies, including server virtualization, improving air conditioning efficiency, and powering down idle servers. The numbers suggest that many data center operators are implementing  technologies to lower their power bill, yet may not know how much they are saving.

Charles King, an analyst at Pund-IT, called the data "an indication of the disconnection" between IT staff and those who actually pay the bills. "If that's the case, you have to wonder how such companies can possibly capture the full value of their IT investments," King said.

The survey also found strong resistance to liquid cooling, with 64 percent of respondents saying they would never consider liquid cooling in their data center. Seven percent said they are using liquid cooling on all new server installations, while 8 percent had experimented with it and another 21 percent are considering liquid cooling.