(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Environmental watchdog group, the US Environmental Protection Agency (www.epa.gov) announced on Friday it has launched its Energy Star for Enterprise Servers certification (http://energystar.gov), which is the organization’s latest initiative to improve data center energy efficiency.
More than two years in development, the new certification sets the qualifications for servers as being considered energy-efficient and environmentally friendly.
Energy Star for Servers will measure three main categories of performance, including managing power supply performance, functioning in a virtualized environment, and energy benchmarks for measuring and reporting server energy use.
Many manufacturers, such as Dell, IBM, HP, and Sun, are currently developing servers that are expected to meet the new certifications.
The program’s specifications do not apply to blade servers, nor does it include servers with no installed hard drives.
The organization is still developing an accurate measurement to compare blade servers with traditional servers.
The EPA will next work on developing specifications for storage array energy-usage, which is not expected to be completed until the end of 2009, in a best case scenario.
The organization says it will announce more details on the storage specification development process in the coming weeks.
The organization is also developing an Energy Star rating for data centers, although it is uncertain when the program will be completed.
Last July, the EPA announced that at least 215 data centers volunteered to supply data on their energy usage in its effort to develop an Energy Star certification for data center facilities.
