"Power and cooling is a pandemic in the world of the data center." That was the message from Michael Bell, research vice president at Gartner Inc., speaking at the Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations and Management Summit 2007 this week in Orlando. "By next year, about half the world's data centers will be functionally obsolete due to insufficient power and cooling capacity to meet the demands of high-density equipment."
Bridget Botelho at SearchDataCenter reviews Gartner's findings and recommendations about the power and cooling crisis in the data center. Here are a couple specific projections about power and cooling infrastructure:
- By 2011, in-rack and in-row cooling will emerge as the predominant cooling strategy for high-density equipment. This has been a consistent message from the vendors in this space, but its interesting to see agreement from Gartner on this point.
- By the end of the decade, 15 percent of servers will use chip-level or in-chassis cooling technologies from companies like SprayCool and Cooligy Inc.
A survey of attendees found that 93 percent said they will expand/upgrade, relocate or renovate their facility to accommodate power and cooling. That's a very high number, even for a conference that's likely to attract managers seeking practical solutions to data center challenges.
NOTE: We will be providing on-site coverage of upcoming Gartner conference in the data center sector, as we've recently begun working with Gartner as a media partner for their events.
