Gartner research Vice President, Michael Bell says the current data centre power and cooling crisis has reached “pandemic” proportions. “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" he said.

Addressing Gartner’s recent IT Infrastructure, Operations and Management Summit 2007, Bell blamed the explosive growth of blade systems for the crisis. By enabling more processors to be crammed into less space, blades are raising the average power per square metre norm of 5kW to 10kW to as much as 35kW in some installations. Few data centres have either he raw power capacity or the thermal management capabilities sustain this trend.

However, maintaining data centre processing capacity at current levels is not an option. A poll of 100 IT managers at the Gartner event revealed that 93% plan to upgrade, expand or relocate their data centres to meet spiraling demand for processing capacity.

Further reading

Serving Up a Storm – Breaking the power and heat deadlock has become a crucial element of the new dynamics operating in the server market

IT's Energy Crisis – Securing a reliable and cost effective power supply for an organisation’s entire IT needs has become a serious challenge