The impact of data center regulations

Many thanks to Michael Manos from Trust in digital real estate and to all Data Center Knowledge readers who participated in yesterday’s chiller live chat. I thought many of the questions were excellent and gave Mike the opportunity to share his views on a variety of topics including data center cooling, power distribution, containers, flywheels, data center design and regulation.

Due to the number of participants, we were not able to answer all questions, but you will probably have another chance. “One thing’s for sure, we’ll try to do another one of these, given the number of unanswered questions,” Mike writes in Loose screws. “I have already received some great ideas on how to possibly structure these activities.”

Mike has additional thoughts on environmental regulations and their impact on data center operations, and has gathered: video introduction on data center regulations on the Digital Realty Trust website. While regulation may not apply to data centers, it will certainly impact them, and Manos describes some of the impacts that may not be obvious to data center operators. One paradox: data centers become more efficient as they use more energy, but the proposed regulations focus on volume, not efficiency. Multinational enterprises also face challenges that may involve different compliance requirements depending on the scope of the data center. The video is 12 minutes long and you must register with the Digital Property Information Library to access it.