ISO 50001 and Data Centers

ISO 50001:2011, Energy management systems – Requirements with guidance for use, is a voluntary International Standard developed by ISO (International Organization for Standardization). ISO 50001 gives organizations the requirements for energy management systems (EnMS).ISO 50001 provides benefits for organizations large and small, in both public and private sectors, in manufacturing and services, in all regions of the world.ISO 50001 will establish a framework for industrial plants ; commercial, institutional, and governmental facilities ; and entire organizations to manage energy. Targeting broad applicability across national economic sectors, it is estimated that the standard could influence up to 60 % of the world’s energy use.

The ISO 50001 Energy Management System was established by the International Standards Organization (ISO) Energy Management Committee (ISO/PC242), and was announced in the second quarter of this year. The Fab 12 Phase 4 data center which completed certification provides data and control systems for factory automation, and supports both manufacturing and R&D. Adoption of the ISO 50001 Energy Management System is expected to reduce the data center’s power consumption by 8%, conserving 2.21 million kilowatt-hours of electricity and eliminating 1,350 tons of carbon emissions per year. In addition to upgrading existing data centers, TSMC also plans to apply ISO 50001 standards to future data centers and implement the most up-to-date energy-saving designs. TSMC estimates that the company can conserve 59.62 million kilowatt-hours of electricity and eliminate 36,490 tons of carbon emissions per year.

Adopted from http://www.greenm3.com

Increase in Power Bill Raise The Importance of Energy Efficient Data Center

In Hong Kong, China Light and Power (CLP) has asked the government for permission to raise the Power Bill by 9.2 percent next year in 2012, whereas Hongkong Electric (HKE) demanded a 2.64 to 6.08 percent fee hike. The increases requested by both power companies far exceed the rate of inflation. They will add considerably living expenses to residental customers and operation costs to businesses which require large amount of power and energy consumptions.

Adopted from South China Morning Post (SCMP)

Data centers, which come in different sizes and provide mission critical functions for most businesses, consume large amounts of energy and require many investments of significant financial resources to continue operations. Despite of the high demand of data centre in Hong Kong, many organizations are looking for new ways of doing more with less, reducing IT budgets or curtailing the incidental costs associated with data center operations and even expansion.

Saving Energy Consumption and Power Bill

Data center efficiencies can be attained through increasing compute densities, creating cold aisle containment systems or more effective use of outside air, but the key component over time is to have an easily understood metric to gauge data center efficiency, and how much improvement is taking place.

Strategic Media Asia (SMA), which is vendor independent and accredited by British computer Society (BCs), provides data centre and IT professionals with top level understanding of best practices in energy efficient data centre from a series of certificate courses and training seminars focusing on international green standard, financial and regulatory, facilities management, hardware management and software / system networks of Data Centre.
Completion of the accredited courses and examinations will be awarded 3 certificates granted by BCS:

Foundation Certificate in Green IT
Intermediate Certificate in EU Code of Conduct in Data Centre
Intermediate Certificate in Energy & Cost Management in Data Centre

The 3 certificates equips you and your team and data centre to apply for
Certified Energy Efficient Datacentre Award (CEEDA)

We aim at teaching several aspects: (1) Data Centre Utilization (2) Data Centre Facilities (3) Cooling (4) Power Equipment (5) Data Centre Cost Savings (6) Monitoring. Each unit is principally assessed by examinations that lead you through all the steps needed to arrive at a baseline of a modern green data centre and energy saving.

Furthermore, we bring you a unique opportunity to learn from our lecturers and apply the knowledge immediately to your own facility with assistance from our experts. An additional on-site audit services for your own data centre with full audit report can help you achieving the criteria of best practice design and energy efficient in data centre after the series of training programmes.


Target Audience

Data Centre and Facilities Managers
Data Centre Operators
Data Centre Design Consultants
Data Centre Technicians and Engineers
Sales Engineers from OEM Vendors
CSR / Environmental Champions in technology departments
IT Purchasers (Hardware & Software)
IT Architects and Solution Consultants

For more information, please contact (852) 3796 3026 or download our Training Event's Brochure.

Green Data Centre Cut UK Council’s Energy Costs

The Council of Dumfries and Galloway, a region of 148,030 inhabitants in the UK, is expecting to cut US$32,132 in energy costs per year through its recently completed data centre.

This new (Green) data centre will serve as the main storage for all information collected and stored by the Dumfries and Galloway Council. It was designed to meet the Council’s needs for the next ten years.

The Council spent £400,000 (US$642,640) on the project. The return of investment is expected to arrive in less than five years.
As part of Green IT project, the number of the Council’s servers across the region was scaled down to 75 from the previous 32. The Council’s hardware was virtualized, as well.

The new data centre was built inside a restored historical landmark in Dumfries. Its design and construction, lasting six months, was done in conjunction with IBM.

Graeme Mcllorum, Technology Services Manager of Dumfries and Galloway Council, said the main challenge in constructing the new data centre was safeguarding the condition of the historical landmark while installing the required facilities.

“In addition to a number of administrative applications, the data centre also has to run our call centre and other critical council systems, providing care to vulnerable people around the clock, as we upgraded the data centre,” said Mcllorum. To respond to these challenges, the project was designed to boost availability while reducing the risk of disruption.

The new data centre is equipped with a cooling system that uses outside air for cooling (‘Free Cooling’) the ICT machinery. The Dumfries and Galloway government will use this cutting edge cooling system for six months a year, slashing the council’s energy use and costs in air-conditioning down 25 to 30 per cent annually.

The new data centre room is 94 square metres wide, holding approximately 25 racks. It is rated at 144 kilowatts, with an average of four to five kilowatts per rack. The old data centre remains active for back up and recovery.

Adopted from http://www.futuregov.asia

PUE & Cost Savings - Why go Green?

PUE and other efficiency measures on data centre are useful, but we more likely chasing the money now!
Efficient data centres have always made an effort to meet commercial needs – but the economic side of the movement may soon eclipse the “green” side, environmental issues and corporate image.

The move to the cloud is driving this. “Cloud-based services [like Facebook and Google], have the ability to build efficient data centres in locations where there is cheap power, and to highly utilise the IT equipment,” said Mark Monroe, executive director of the The Green Grid. “Their primary function is to drive the cost of a transaction down as low as it can be.”

The Green Grid has just had its annual European conference, over two days in Paris and London, and is reacting to this world, where it is all about the lowest cost for transactions. “Amazon can deliver a CPU-hour, for 10 cents,” said Monroe. He would have delivered the same measure for $3.75, two years ago, when he worked on Sun’s sustainable data centres.

It’s more about the money than the tech

The Green Grid has been known for the PUE measure of effiency, which has been picked up by various interantional bodies, and is regularly quoted for any new efficient data centre development.
At first sight, its other work looks like a continuation of that sort of effort, providing yet more ways for centres to measure their performance and compare themselves, including the still-under-development CUE and WUE measures of carbon-usage and water-usage respectively.

But alongside these measures, the group is coming up with a wide range of other material, which is increasingly designed to look hard-nosed, practical and, let’s face it, commercial.

Saving money, not PUE

The latest Green Grid White Paper surveyed members’ use of economisers, the cooling system which offers free air cooling and replaces the use of chillers.  Economisers trumpeted as a way to improve PUE. According to the survey, however, they do improve efficiency, but have no discernible effect on PUE.

“There was no statistically significant difference between the PUE reported by those who use economizers and by those who do not,” the report found.

They are taking off rapidly amongst Grid members, however, they save money. Around half the members surveyed are using economisers, and they are using them for almost all the hours allowed by the local climates (which turns out to be around 4,000 hours). They are doing so, because they are saving money – around 20 percent of the energy bill, with a payback time of around 20 months, according to Monroe.

Training program and Best Practices in Energy and Cost Savings for Data Centre

The British Computer Society is now launching an advanced certificate in Energy and Cost Savings in Data Centre. Strategic Media Asia is an Approved Training Provider in Hong Kong which is qualified to deliver such professional certificate training programme with Chartered Engineers (CEng). For more information and detailed syllabus, please contact (852) 3796 3026 or download brochure here.

Facebook Expands Green Open Hardware Push

The Open Compute Project is looking deeper into green data centres, from storage to systems management

If Facebook officials have their way, their Open Compute Project will go beyond servers and power supplies, touching on every aspect of a data centre’s infrastructure.

The initiative kicked off in April when Facebook open-sourced the server and data centre specifications the social networking giant employed in building its data centre in Prineville in Oregon. The project has since enrolled an impressive array of members, from Intel, Asus and Rackspace to Mellanox, Huawei and Red Hat, not to mention a few research and education institutions.

Spreading the initiative

It is an indication of the various directions in which the project is rapidly moving, Amir Michael, hardware design manager at Facebook, said in an interview with eWEEK during the recently concluded SC 11 supercomputing show in Seattle. Facebook is already moving forward with the next generation of the custom servers it has designed, Michael said.

At the same time, project members also are looking to tackle other aspects of the data centre, including systems management, storage and I/O. The push in these directions will help create the momentum to solve that key issues that Facebook officials saw when looking at data centre technology – that, in a broad way, proprietary products from large and small vendors alike could address some of the mainstream needs that are present in most enterprises, but often do not meet the unique demands a particular business may have.

Growing green roots

About two years ago, Facebook engineers set out  to start designing their own servers using standard off-the-shelf technologies. Up to that point, the company has been using systems from traditional OEMs. Facebook worked with chip makers Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, as well as systems makers Hewlett-Packard and Dell, to create the custom servers.

The aim was to build systems that offer the performance needed to run a fast-growing social network with 800 million-plus members while keeping down capital, power and cooling costs in the densely populated data centres. The Facebook-developed systems are 1.5U (2.65 inches) tall – rather than the more traditional 1U (1.5 inches) servers – which, among other positives, makes for better air flow and lower cooling costs, Michael said.

There is no paint or logos that are found on servers from OEMs – which not only reduces the capital costs, but also makes the systems lighter – there is a more energy-efficient power supply in place and they are easier to service, with tool-less components, from fans to power supplies.
The Oregon facility also uses outside air to keep the systems cool, rather than running expensive chiller units, Michael said.

Energy efficiency benefits

The result of the work was a 38 percent increase in energy efficiency at the Oregon facility at a lower cost of 24 percent as compared with Facebook’s other data centres, he said. The data centre also has a power usage effectiveness (PUE) ratio of 1.07. The PUE ratio is a way to measure how efficiently a facility uses its energy; the closer to 1.0, the better. The Environmental Protection Agency has a standard PUE rate of 1.5.

Facebook expects to get similar results as it builds new data centres, Michael said. Last month, company executives said they plan to build their next data centre in Lulea, Sweden, just on the edge of the Arctic Circle, to serve users inEuropeand other regions. The site was chosen for its cold air and access to hydroelectric power.

The company also is working on its next generation of servers, which will include such technologies as an Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) and the ability to reboot on the LAN. They also will continue to be powered by Intel and AMD chips, though Michael said the company also is keeping an eye on other chips, including those from ARM Holdings. ARM-designed chips from the likes of Nvidia, Qualcomm and Samsung are found in most smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices, but the company also is looking to move up the ladder and into low-power servers.

Adopted from http://www.eweekeurope.co.uk

Renewable Resources Power Data Center in Iceland

British data hosting company Verne Global has commissioned telecommunications group Colt to build a data center powered entirely by renewable energy in Iceland. The parts will be fabricated in the U.K. before being shipped to Iceland.

With undeniable logic, the Icelandic government has for years been promoting the country as the ideal place in the world to site a data-center. But it has not always been an easy sell.

What makes Iceland perfect is its climate and the availability of energy resources. The greatest expense data centers face is power and most of that is used to chill the racks of servers. But, with an average high temperature peaking at 13 degrees Celsius, or a little over 55 degrees Fahrenheit, in July, it is nearly always easy to let in some cool, filtered air.

Then there is Iceland’s abundance of energy, which is not only “green” but also competitively priced. It is cheap as it is almost impossible to export because its source is geothermal or hydroelectric. If Iceland’s energy was in the form of gas, oil or coal it would be a different story, but the challenge of shipping electicity means industries have to be located close to the energy source. And the country still has plenty of untapped sources of hydroelectric and geothermal energy.

The problem is the word “geothermal” makes potential customers for Icelandic data centers think of geological instability, which is not ideal for mission-critical data. And when the eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano disrupted much of European airspace in 2010, it wasn’t the advertising for physical stability the state body Invest in Iceland could have hoped for.

But Jeff Monroe, chief executive of Verne Global, describes the location of the new data center: “It’s in the former NATO allied command base, which is a location in Iceland that’s very geologically stable and outside the prevailing winds for any volcanic activity.” He points out that these are probably reasons why NATO chose the location originally.

Mr. Monroe said the campus was designed for expansion and included infrastructure to supply up to a peak load 100 megawatts of computer power, enough for the trading floor of more than 30 investment banks.

Iceland also has three fiberoptic submarine cables linking it with Europe and America. A fourth is due to come on-stream in 2012 and, it is claimed, will have the lowest latency across the Atlantic.
The 500 meter square  data center hall is being manufactured by Colt in the U.K. and will be shipped to Keflavik, Iceland, in early October. It is made up of 37 modules that will be transported by sea and assembled within weeks at the Verne Global data center campus in Iceland.

“From an engineer’s point of view, Iceland couldn’t be any better,” said Guy Ruddock, vice president of operations for Colt Data Center Services. “Thanks to the cool climate we’ve been able to remove all of the compression cooling from the design, so there’s no huge chillers or noisy pieces of equipment.”

“The modular design of the data center means we can offer a service which takes four months from the day you sign until you put in your first server. It’s about 6-8 times faster than traditional building,” he said.

Mr. Monroe said the first announcements from customers for the new data center would begin to be released at the beginning of October.

Adopted from The Wall Street Journal, http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/

Energy Efficient Data Centre, Realistically

Adopted from www.datacenterknowledge.com

Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) is one of the basic and most effective metrics for measuring data center energy efficiency. It is calculated by taking the total power consumed by a data center facility and dividing it by the power consumed by the IT equipment. The resulting ratio provides the effective power overhead for a unit of IT load. For example, a PUE value of 2.0 means that for every watt used to power IT equipment, an additional watt is required to deliver the power and keep the equipment cool. Data center managers are increasingly working to take measures to reduce PUE.

The PUE metric was introduced by the Green Grid, an association of IT professionals focused on increasing the energy efficiency of data centers. Green Grid also published the DCiE (Data Center Infrastructure Efficiency) metric. Both metrics measure the same two parameters, the total power to the data center and the IT equipment power.

PUE = Total Power into Datacenter/IT Equipment Power
DCiE = IT Equipment Power/Total Power into Datacenter

A PUE value of 1 depicts the optimal level of data center efficiency. In practical terms, a PUE value of 1 means that all power going into the data center is being used to power IT equipment. Anything above a value of 1 means there is data center overhead required to support the IT load.

Data Center Infrastructure Effectiveness (DCiE) is the reciprocal of PUE. It is calculated as a percentage by taking the total power of the IT equipment and dividing it by the total power into the data center multiplied by 100. A PUE value of 3.0 would equate to a DCiE value of 33%, or suggest that the IT equipment was consuming 33% of the facility’s power.

As stated above, in an ideal case scenario, all the power entering the data center should be used to operate the IT load (servers, storage and network). If we consider that all the power entering the data center is consumed for operating it, then the resultant PUE should ideally be 1. Realistically, however, some of this power is diverted to support cooling, lighting and other support infrastructure. Some of the remaining power is consumed due to losses in the power system, and the rest then goes to service the IT load.

Calculating PUE

Consider that the power entering the data center (measured at the utility meter) is 100 kW and the power consumed by the IT load (measured at the output of the UPS) is 50 kW, PUE will be calculated as follows:

PUE = 100 / 50 = 2.0

A PUE value of 2.0 is quite usual for a data center. It means that for every watt required to power a server, 2 watts of power is consumed. Since we pay for every watt of power entering the data center, every watt of overhead represents an additional cost. Reducing this overhead will reduce the overall operating costs for the data center.

The two ways in which we can bring about a change and improve data center energy efficiency include:

• Reducing the power going to the support infrastructure
• Reducing losses in the power system.

This way we can ensure that more of the power entering the data center should make it to the IT load; consequently, improving data center energy efficiency and reducing the PUE.

PUE Metric Is Not Always Ideal

Are there drawbacks to using PUE as a measurement of data center efficiency? Data center managers are under immense pressure to reduce costs and match the reported PUE with that of other companies. Unfortunately, this is not always the right approach and can have a negative impact. If data center managers focus only on reducing PUE, they may inadvertently use more energy and increase data center costs.

For example, a data center which has input power of 100 kW, 50kW of which is being used to power IT equipment. As previously illustrated, this would give us an initial PUE value of 2.0.

Suppose the organization now decides to virtualize some servers. In fact, it is so successful with virtualization that it is able to reduce the power to IT equipment by 25 kW and the overall power to the data center by the same amount. What happens to the PUE in such a case?
PUE (after virtualization) = 75 / 25 = 3.0

But isn’t this higher value what we want to avoid? Well, not necessarily. Let us understand the reason behind the increase or decrease in PUE value. While it may seem ambiguous, any reduction in IT usage will actually result in a higher PUE.

Here’s another formula for PUE:

PUE = IT Load + Infrastructure Load / IT Load = 1+Infrastructure Load / IT Load

Thus, when IT load is reduced, Infrastructure Load / IT Load will always increase, thereby, resulting in an increase in the PUE. Conversely, increasing the IT load will always decrease the PUE. So, if the PUE has gone up, does this mean the data center is now less energy efficient? On the contrary, the data center is now more energy efficient. We are able to do more with less now, that is, same work with less energy at a lesser cost.

Example of Virtualized/Unvirtualized Data Centers
Here’s an example using power pricing data from Maharashtra state in India.

Before virtualization:
Annual energy utilization = 100kW x 8760 hrs/yr = 876000 kWh
Annual electricity cost = 876000kWh x Rs. 3.10/kWh* = Rs. 27, 15,600
*Base Tariff for HT I – Industries – Mahadiscom

After Virtualization:
Annual energy utilization = 75kW x 8760 hrs/yr = 657000 kWh
Annual electricity cost = 657000 kWh x Rs. 3.10/kWh* = Rs. 20, 36,700
*Base Tariff for HT I – Industries – Mahadiscom

Considering that both data centers (both before and after virtualization) are able to perform the same amount of work, we can see from the above calculation that the virtualized data center is noticeably more energy efficient. In fact, the virtualized data center can be made even more energy efficient if the support infrastructure is now reduced to match the reduced IT load.

PUE becomes a meaningless number if we do not know how to use it to measure the outcome of changes in the data center. Knowing that virtualization will eventually increase the PUE of our data center, should we avoid it? No, infact when we examine the PUE of our data center over a period of time we should also take into account when the virtualization actually took place.

Other Variables in Energy Efficiency

We must track any changes that may have taken place in the IT infrastructure or IT Load in addition to tracking our PUE, so that we are able to correlate the changes to the PUE value. There are many other factors which may impact PUE. Redundancy, for example, will increase PUE. There will always be tradeoffs between availability and energy efficiency. Data center equipment – from cooling equipment to UPSs to server power supplies – will run more efficiently when they are heavily loaded.

The bottom line is that PUE, while an important piece of the energy efficiency puzzle, is just that – one piece of the energy efficiency puzzle. PUE constitutes only one component of a comprehensive energy management program which must consider both sides of the coin – the IT and the facility.


Data Centre Training in Energy Efficiency and Green Practices

Strategic Media Asia in Hong Kong is a leading events, seminars and trainings provider for data centre and telecommunication (ICT) industries. For more information, please visit http://www.stmedia-asia.com/ or download our event and training brochure.

Our Specialties and Event Topics Include:

Intelligient Building Systems
Design & Planning Telecom Network
Fibre Optic and Copper Cabling
Data Centre Design and Management
Data Centre Green Energy
Data Centre Audit and Compliance

The First Well-structured Green Data Centre Trainings in Hong Kong

Get ready to become a data centre energy specialist and prepare for an international data centre award in energy efficiency - CEEDA

Today, many organizations are looking for new ways of doing more with less, reducing IT budgets or curtailing the incidental costs associated with data center expansions. And data center managers need to focus on creating efficient operating environments to augment the life of existing data centers. Data center efficiencies can be attained through increasing compute densities, creating cold aisle containment systems or more effective use of outside air, but the key component over time is to have an easily understood metric to gauge data center efficiency, and how much improvement is taking place.

StrategicMedia Asia (SMA) provides any data centre and IT professionals with top level understanding of best practices in energy efficient data centre management from a series of 3 accredited certificate courses and training seminars (below) which focus on international green standard, financial and regulatory, facilities management, hardware management and software / system networks of Data Centre.

 Data Centre Facility and Infrastructure Engineering

The section is fundamental for executive and data centre owners, managers and operators to enrich their basic knowledge beyond the industry jargons and terminology. We provide a general introduction of the critical infrastructure system that supports typical Data Centres and environments. It also prepares you to fully understand the main components that facilitate Data Centre design & build, operation and management.

Green IT

The training provides a fundamental qualification for ICT engineers who are involved in creating sustainable and energy efficient data centre or exploiting the role of IT in helping deliver sustainable ICT operation and more efficient business practices to other areas of the organization. It also introduces different Green Standards such as ISO 14000 Series (Energy Measurement), Energy Star and PUE / DCiE (From The Green Grid).

Energy and Cost Management in Data Centre

This section explicitly deals with an organization's strategy as it relates to the effective use of energy by software, ICT systems and support infrastructure (mechanical and electrical systems) within the data centre. It will impart an understanding of the use and cost of energy in data centres with an appreciation of the contributing factors, awareness of best practices at a high-level and strategies to control and manage energy consumption and cost in data centres. Key area include:

Cost & Energy Monitoring and Reporting in Data Centre

How to Manage Energy and Cost

Interdisciplinary Teams’ Interactions and Communications

Energy Management and Energy Performance Efficiency

Efficiency Metrics

Metering

Reporting Energy and Carbon e.g. for CRC

Reporting Cost - The challenge of per cost accounting

The Roles for -

Estate Management, Facilities Management, Data Centre Manager,

IT Management, IT Analysts, Business Management

EU Code of Conduct in Data Centre

The training will impart an understanding of the purpose of the EU Code of Conduct and how to apply the Code's best practices at a high-level as well as helping you to develop a common language around energy efficiency. Key area include:

The reason of implementing best practice in the Code of Conduct

The bodies who use the EU Code of Conduct

Energy Measurement and Metrics

Best Practice - Interactions and Interdependencies

Best Practice - In detail

- Data Centre Utilization, Management and Planning

- IT Equipment and Services

- Cooling

- Data Centre Power Equipment

- Other Data Centre Equipment

- Data Centre Building

- Monitoring

- Practices to become minimum expected

- Items under consideration

Green Data Centre Remians Hot in next 5 to 10 years

Companies are beginning to focus more on implementing systems that will reduce their energy expenses and carbon emissions, according to a study by Pike Research.


Enterprises’ investment in environmentally-friendly data centre systems will grow sharply over the next ten years, rising to represent 28 percent of the total data centre market.

In a change from the past, companies are now focused on implementing systems that will reduce their energy expenses and carbon emissions. As a result, global revenues associated with green data centre technologies will grow from $7.5bn (£4.3bn) to $41.4bn by 2015. That increase is partly due to greater awareness of the financial benefits of greater efficiency and Corporate Images (CSR, Corporate Social Responsibility).

The cost of energy has seldom been a concern for IT departments in the past and there was little incentive to invest in energy efficiency improvements. However as data centre energy costs become more visible, the financial benefits of moving to a green mode of operation are being recognised by CEOs, CFOs and CIOs.


Green Transformation


The change is part of a broader shift in data centre technology, which is seeing the growing use of adaptable technologies such as virtualisation. This change is also shifting the way data centres are designed and the relationship between IT and business sides of organisations.

Power and cooling, still, are key issues and make up the largest proportion of the green data centre market segment, making up 46 percent of the segment’s revenues by 2015, according to the study. The second-largest category will be energy-efficient IT equipment, accounting for 41 percent of the market segment, and monitoring and management equipment for Auditing, with 14 percent, according to the “Green Data Centres” report.

Adopted from www.eweekeurope.co.uk

Green Data Centre Best Practices Translated into Energy and Cost Saving

Data Centres come in different sizes - whether it's four servers in a closet or hundreds of servers in a building - they provide mission critical functions for most businesses. Meanwhile, Data Centres consume large amounts of energy and require the investment of significant financial resources to continue operations. In recent years, the Data Centre management professionals have begun to focus on ways to minimize energy consumption and overcome emission challenges. More importantly, the findings tell us that sustainable practices can be translated into financial savings.

Strategic Media Asia (SMA) is vendor independent and professional training provider, which is currently accredited by BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, in green data centre qualifications in Hong Kong. The green program provides you with top level understanding of best practices in energy efficient data centre management from a series of 3 accredited certificate courses and training seminars which focus on international green standard, financial and regulatory, facilities management, hardware management and software / system networks of Data Centre.

(1) Green IT (3-day, accredited by British Computer Society)
(2) EU Code of Conduct in Data Centre (2-day, accredited by British Computer Society)
(3) Energy and Cost Management in Data Centre (3-day, accredited by British Computer Society)

PLUS 2-day training seminar on "Fundamentals of Data Centre Facility and Infrastructure Engineering" organized by SMA at the beginning of 3 certificate courses.

The Green Data Centre Training Framework

Completion of the accredited courses and examinations will be awarded 3 certificates granted by BCS:

Foundation Certificate in Green IT
Intermediate Certificate in EU Code of Conduct in Data Centre
Intermediate Certificate in Energy & Cost Management in Data Centre


The 3 certificates equips you and your team and data centre to apply for
Certified Energy Efficient Datacentre Award (CEEDA)

SMA aim at teaching several aspects: (1) Data centre utilization (2) Data Centre Facility (3) Cooling (4) Power equipment (5) Data centre building (6) Monitoring. Each unit is principally assessed by examinations that lead you through all the steps needed to arrive at a baseline of a modern green data centre and energy saving.

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