Inside IBM's Raleigh LEED Gold certified data center.
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — IT giant IBM (www.ibm.com) announced on Wednesday its Raleigh, North Carolina data center has been awarded the company’s first LEED Gold certification by the US Green Building Council.
The data center, which opened in February, was built within an existing building on IBM’s Research Triangle Park.
Reusing 95 percent of the original buildings shell and recycling 90 percent of the materials leftover from construction, IBM reduced the carbon footprint of the 100,000 square foot building by almost 50 percent.
“We are very proud to have IBM’s first LEED Gold certified data center located right here in North Carolina,” says IBM senior state executive for North Carolina Bob Greenberg. “Through local sourcing, recycling and tremendous innovation we’ve been able to achieve a significant milestone for the company and further solidify IBM’s commitment to Research Triangle Park. Data centers have always been a critical part of IBM’s global delivery network and this facility, our CLOUD data center, has furthered IBM’s ability to deliver innovation and value to customers around the world.”
IBM estimates its unique rainwater collection system that generates non-palatable water for use in the facility will collect about 3.5 million gallons annually.
The reflective roof decreases the indoor temperature of the facility, while outside air is used to free-cool the data center for almost half the year.
A sensor network reads temperature and relative humidity throughout the data center and adjusts cooling in response to demand. IBM says this will reduce annual energy costs by 15 percent.
IBM says its modular design method, IBM Enterprise Modular Data Center, allows significant future capacity to be added in nearly half the time it would take typical data centers to grow.
IBM EMDC meets demand through the addition of future space, power and cooling to the data center without distrupting existing operations.
This translates to a deferral of up to 40 percent of capital costs and 50 percent of operational costs until customer demand requires the expansion.
About Nicole Henderson
Nicole Henderson writes full-time for the Web Host Industry Review where she covers daily news and features online, as well as in print. She has a bachelor of journalism from Ryerson University in Toronto, and has been writing for the WHIR since September 2010. You can find her on Twitter @NicoleHenderson.
No related posts.
